AustLit

'Dakota Feirer is a Bundjalung-Gumbayngirr man based in Dharawal and Yuin country on the south coast. Since graduating from an honours degree at the University of Wollongong, Dakota has consulted for NITV, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and AIATSIS. He is carving a path as an independent researcher, educator and advocate for cultural sovereignty and progressive warriorhood.' (https://overland.org.au/2021/07/poetry-heal-country/)

Jacob Gallagher is a Kamilaroi author based in Ngunnawal Country (Canberra). He was one of the 2023 recipients of the black&write! fellowship for his novel manuscript ‘The Doubles’, ' a supernatural crime story set in the Liverpool Plains region of rural New South Wales.'

Source: Books+Publishing.

Herb Wharton was born in Yumba, an Aboriginal camp in the south-western Queensland town of Cunnamulla, one of eleven children. His maternal grandmother was Kooma, and both grandfathers were Irish. Before Wharton started writing, he worked as a stockman, a drover and a labourer. He took up writing late in life, at around the age of 50 and, with a grant from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board (ATSIAB) of the Australia Council, bought an electric typewriter and began writing poems, some of which were published in various journals.

'Lay Maloney, a Gumbaynggirr and Gunggandji person of South Sea Islander descent, was born in Cairns and raised in Yarrabah. Maloney is a storyteller with a focus on writing and illustrating. Their debut work ‘Weaving Us Together’ is a young adult manuscript about a non-binary Aboriginal person named Jean growing up on Australia’s mid-north coast.'

Source: black&write!

Tylissa Elisara was born and raised on Mamu Country in Innisfail, Queensland, and is a descendant of the Narungga, Kaurna and Adyamathanha people of South Australia. She won a 2021 black&write! Fellowship for her manuscript 'Wurrtoo'.

Source: black&write! Fellowship announcement (https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2021/05/26/187059/anderson-elisara-awarded-2021-blackwrite-fellowships/). (Sighted: 26/5/2021)

'Susie Anderson is a Wergaia and Wemba Wemba woman from Western Victoria and lives in Sydney. She has performed at local and international poetry events including LitCrawl Wellington and the Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne. In 2016 she was a resident at the Banff Centre in Canada and in 2014 had a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship. Selected publications include Runway Magazine, Running Dog, Rabbit Poetry, Australian Book Review, Voiceworks and The Lifted Brow.

Carl Merrison has worked with the Clontarf Foundation, which he helped start in his home town of Halls Creek in 2008: the program engages with Indigenous boys through AFL, using an incentive program to increase school attendance.

His first book was published with Magabala Books in 2018. In 2020, he received a black&write! Fellowship for the manuscript 'Backyard Sports', a children's series set in the Kimberley.

Eunice Day's mother is from the Yimen Eaglehawk people from the Dawson Valley and her father from the Lama Lama people of Northern Queensland. In 2020, she won a black&write! Fellowship for her illustrated children's manuscript 'Rabbits by the Fence Line'.

Source: black&write!

Lisa Fuller is a Wuilli Wuilli woman from Eidsvold, Queensland, also descended from the Wakka Wakka and Gurang Gurang mobs. She has a Masters of Creative Writing, attended the 2014 Residential Editorial Program, and is the joint winner of the 2014 Anne Edgeworth Fellowship. She has previously published three poems and a short story in Etchings Indigenous: Treaty (2011) and six poems in By Close of Business (2013). An editor and publisher by trade, Lisa has undertaken a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Canberra, focussed on oral and archival research in and around her community.

Tania Crampton-Larking from the west coast of South Australia, has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Adelaide and loves to write.

'Lystra Rose, a descendant of the Guugu Yimithirr, Birri Gubba, Erub and Scottish nations, is an award-winning writer and editor who lives in a land where the rainforest meets the sea . . . the Yugambeh-speaking nation (the Gold Coast), Australia. When she's not catching waves with her husband and two kids, Lystra is editing  Surfing Life magazine. She's the first female editor-in-chief of a mainstream surf magazine in the world.' (Hachette Sept. 2022 catalogue)

A founding member of the musical group the Stiff Gins, Nardi Simpson was joint winner of the 2018 black&write! Fellowship for her manuscript The Song of the Crocodile, 'which explores three generations of a fictional Aboriginal family in a rural township.'

In 2022, she was selected as the Copyright Agency-University of Technology Sydney (UTS) New Writer in Residence for 2022.

Sources:

State Library of Queensland (http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/whats-on/awards/blackwrite).

Dylan Coleman is the daughter of Mercy Glastonbury (q.v.) and with her family, shares strong connections to country, culture and tradition. She is a member of the Kokatha Mula Nation and grew up in Thevenard on the far west coast of South Australia.

She holds a BA from the University of South Australia and Northern Arizona University (USA), and both a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide.

Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar woman whose family have belonged to the south coast of Western Australia since long before history started being recorded. She writes fiction, essays and poetry while (mostly) traveling around the continent now called Australia in a ragged caravan towed by an ancient troopy (the car has earned 'vintage' status). Born in Perth, away from her ancestral country she has lived most of her life in Victoria and most of that in and around Melbourne.

During an extended circuit of the continent she wrote a novel, influenced by certain experiences gained on the road.

Poet and essayist Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi woman from Gunnedah and Tamworth, North-western New South Wales. She worked in media law and Aboriginal women's law and policy. In 2017-2018, she was a Fulbright scholar at Harvard Law School, where she was named the Dean’s Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law. Alison was also the 2018 Indigenous Poet-in-Residence for the Queensland Poetry Festival.

Jannali Jones is a Krowathunkoolong woman of the Kurnai nation. She is a lawyer and writer and enjoys writing mainly in the areas of fantasy and science fiction. In 2010 Jannali was enrolled in a Masters Of Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Technology, Sydney. She has been awarded a High Commendation for her Indigenous writing in the McDonalds Performing Arts Challenge.

In 2011, Jannali was a part of the Young Writer-in-Residence Program for the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre in Perth.

'Adrian Stanley is a Boandik person on his mother’s side from Robe in South Australia, and a Kalali person from the channel country in Queensland on his father’s side. He is the working on country co-ordinator on the Gawler Ranges National Park in South Australia. He won the Unpublished Indigenous Writer award at the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards, and has previously been published in Seizure. ' (Griffith Review 55)

A descendant of the Muruwari people (Bourke and Brewarrina area), Jane Harrison is a playwright, critic, and novelist. Raised by her mother (alongside a sister) in the Victorian Dandenongs, she worked first as a copywriter for advertising agencies before she was commissioned by Ilbijerri Theatre Company to write the play Stolen. The play was included in the VCE English and NSW HSC syllabi and awarded the Kate Challis RAKA Award in 2002.

Jared Thomas is an Indigenous author, playwright, poet, and academic. He grew up in Port Augusta on Nukunu country, and his mother's Aboriginal family came from Winton, Queensland.

Thomas holds a Bachelor of Arts, a Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing, and a Masters in Creative Writing from Adelaide University. He has been a freelance journalist, film script editor, and writer, and since, 2006 has lectured in communications, film, literature, and art at the University of South Australia.

Tristan Savage was born in Maryborough and grew up in Townsville. He attended James Cook University and was awarded a Bachelor of Creative Arts, majoring in Theatre and a Bachelor of Theatre (Honours). Savage is a comedian and writer. He won the 2011 Deadly Funny Award, a national competition held as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival. (Source: State Library of Queensland website and Rift Breaker)

Scott Prince a member of the Brisbane Broncos Rugby League Team, debuted his writing career in 2013, with the release of his first book Deadly D and Justice Jones: Making the Team. In 2013, Scott and his co-author, Dave Hartley had also been awarded the Kuril Dhagun Prize in the State Library of Queensland's Black&Write! Indigenous Writing Fellowships. (Source: The North West Star newspaper, and the State Library of Queensland websites)

Dave Hartley, a descendant of the Barunggam people of the Darling Downs/Chinchilla regions of Queensland is Deputy Principal of a Primary School in Logan City, Queensland, and writer. Hartley has worked in education for many years and had worked across many year levels prior to entering into school administration. In 2009, Hartley was awarded 'Gold Coast Teacher of the Year'

As a writer, Hartley with his co-author Scott Prince, was awarded the Kuril Dhagun Prize in 2013, for their first children's book, Deadly D and Justice Jones: Making the Team.

Jillian Boyd Bowie is a Torres Strait Islander woman from the Samsep and Zagareb tribes of Erub and Mer. She is an author, poet and songwriter, born and raised on Thursday Island. After her engagement to Richard (Uncle Richy) Bowie, she relocated with her six children to Darwin, Northern Territory, where she works as a mentor for an Indigenous employment program.

In 2012, Jillian won the black+write Indigenous Writing Fellowship, along with Tori-Jay Mordey, for Bakir and Bi.

'Teagan Chilcott, is a descendant of the Kamilaroi people from Northern NSW and Wakka Wakka people from Queensland. She was born in Brisbane, and raised by her mother and grandmother. As a child, Teagan went to Taigum State School and Scarborough State Primary School where, in grade 7, she won the Indigenous Student of the Year Award (Deadly Student Award), and gave her first speech at NAIDOC.

In high school, at the Brisbane School of Distance Education, Teagan felt she had found her independence and confidence to truly pursue her writing, along with the encouragement of her mother.

Visual artist and author Sue McPherson was born in Sydney to an Aboriginal mother from Wiradjuri country and a Torres Strait Islander father. She was a Ward of the State for a number of years before been adopted into the McPherson family, land owners from the Batlow area in southern New South Wales. After leaving school McPherson worked in various jobs before moving to Wagga Wagga, New South Wales where she worked with the Regional Aboriginal Land Council. Later she gained her Bachelor of Teaching from Charles Sturt University, and worked as a teacher at the Riverina Institute of TAFE.

Poet and writer, Ali Cobby Eckermann was born in 1963 at Brighton, Adelaide, on Kaurna Country, and grew up on Ngadjuri country between Blyth and Brinkworth in mid-north South Australia. She travelled extensively and lived most of her adult life on Arrernte country, Jawoyn country, and Larrakia country in the Northern Territory. When she was 34, Eckermann met her birth mother Audrey, and learnt that her mob was Yankunytjatjara from north-west South Australia. Her mother was born near Ooldea, south of Maralinga on Kokatha country.