ARTIST FELLOW/FACILITATOR

Ali Cobby Eckermann is a Yankunytjatjara woman born on Kaurna land in South Australia. Her first collection little bit long time was written in the desert about her journey to find her family and launched her literary career in 2009. Ali received a Deadly Award for outstanding contribution to Indigenous Literature in 2012. She Ali toured Ireland as Australian Poetry Ambassador and won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and Book of the Year award at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards for Ruby Moonlight, a massacre verse novel (2013). Ali was the inaugural recipient of the Tungkunungka Pintyanthi Fellowship at Adelaide Writers Week (2014) for her memoir Too Afraid To Cry, and was the first Aboriginal Australian writer to attend the International Writing Program at University of Iowa. In 2017 Ali received the prestigious Windham Campbell Award for Poetry from Yale University, USA. She is the recipient of the 2018 Australia Council New Literary Fellowship. She is an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University.

ARTIST FELLOW/FACILITATOR

Dicky Senda is a writer and food activist from Mollo, South Central Timor, Indonesia. Has published a poetry compilation Cerah Hati (2011), a collection of short stories Kanuku Leon (2013), Hau Kamelin & Tuan Kamlasi (2015) and Sai Rai(2017). He was invited to the Makassar International Writers Festival (2013), Bienal Sastra Salihara (2015), Asean Literary Festival 2016, Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2017 and Melbourne Writers Festival 2018. Now lives in Taiftob village in the mountains of Mollo, South Central Timor and manages social enterprise communities named Lakoat. Kujawas, which integrates art communities, citizen libraries, archive rooms and production space for processed agricultural products. Together with the community in his village, he initiated Skol Tamolok, a critical and contextual education model for indigenous people, the Apinat-Aklahat residency program and the Mnahat Fe’u Heritage Trailer, a gastronomic tour program during the harvest season in the Mollo mountains.

Nancy Bates is a First Nations composer, writer, educator, and proudly Barkindji. With cultural ties to communities running the length of the Baarka, she is river woman living a multifaceted life, intertwining music, education, and advocacy to foster understanding and unity. As a Cultural Navigator at Flinders University, Nancy plays a pivotal role in shaping the discourse on Indigenous health and cultural safety. Nancy's current project, the ‘Songs Inside’ documentary’, exemplifies her commitment to a testimony to the transformative power of music. Through film project, she teaches ukulele and songwriting to women in prison, giving them voice, and expression. In essence, Nancy Bates dedicated to upholding the rights of Indigenous peoples through the harmonious blend of education, advocacy, and the healing power of music.

Anwar Jimpe Rachman is an author, curator, and archivist based in Makassar. He was a co-curator for ‘Jakarta Biennale’ (2015), curated ‘Bom Benang’ (‘Yarn Bombing’, 2012-17, Makassar), and has been the director of the ‘Makassar Biennale’ since 2017. Jimpe is also the founder of Tanahindie in 1999—a Makassar-based urban studies collective whose research activities have been based on the yard as a space and sphere for artistic activity and research. Jimpe also works with young people, facilitating writing programs and art studies, which resulted in the 2018 publication Kota Diperam dalam Lontang / A City Soaked in Drinking Stall (Tanahindie Press, 2018) with collaborator Stichting Doen-Arts Collaboratory. As well as the visual arts, Jimpe also works as an archivist in Kampung Buku, a public library in Makassar, Indonesia, as well as being involved in documenting Makassar’s music scene. In 2019 he served as a researcher and director for the documentary Sound of the City: Makassar Popular Music in 100 Years (Tanahindie - RIC - Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture, 2019). His latest book is Rock In Celebes dan 100 Tahun Musik Populer Makassar (2021).

Michelle Prasad is a Project Manager working in the Indigenous sector. In 2020, she worked alongside Kris Syamsudin to publish The Heart of The Spice Forest, a book that showcases traditional stories and recipes passed down through generations of local women. The book includes stories and recipes in both English and native Bahasa, and features a foreword written by the Sultan of Ternate. The Heart of The Spice Forest was named so because it not only highlights the traditional recipes of the local women but also captures the sense of love and community among them. Michelle is highly passionate about indigenous knowledge systems and advocates for the recognition of the indigenous way of life as a crucial component of sustainable development.

Lionel Fogarty is a Mununjali Yugembeh political activist who has held his place in the Australian and international poetry arena for over forty years. The grassroots origins of his poetry are a vital insight of the Aboriginal struggle and throughout his life has championed the Deaths In Custody and Land Rights movements. Lionel is the author of thirteen collections; common themes are the maintenance of traditional Aboriginal culture and the everyday realities of European occupation. His work has sometimes been described as 'surrealist'. In 2023 Lionel won the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for his latest book Harvest Lingo.

Alexandra de Araujo Tilman is a poet, teacher, and researcher from Timor Leste. She was born in Maubissse on May 28, 1976. The flesh and blood of a deceased father who also fought for the independence of Timor-Leste (Falintil). She was raised and schooled by her father and five adoptive siblings until she entered the world of university and received the title of Indonesian Literature in 2000. She began to engage in the world of literature in 1991 through her first poetry work, Pagi November, which has now been translated into English, Tetum, and Portuguese. Her book Getting to Know the Oral Traditions of Hamulak Mamba'e was published in 2001. She was representing Timor-Leste in Darwin and Laos, currently a Master of Education (MAP) candidate at UKSW Salatiga Indonesia.

Lulu Houdini is a proud Gamilaraay/Gomeroi woman, writer, artsworker, nurse and birth worker. She creates and explores around connections with poetry of land, sea, sky, story. The main themes she explores are texture, Country, identity, traditional language, kweer nature, sensuality, love and finding our way back home to the guniimara, the mother's hands. Lulu currently lives on and cares for Kabi Kabi/Gubbi Gubbi & Jinibara Country, Sunshine Coast.

Rudi Fofid, also known as "Opa Rudi'' in the Moluccas, is a poet, journalist, and peace activist born in Langgur, Southeast Moluccas, on the island of Kei. His ancestors came from Banda and were separated from Banda Eli and Banda Elat. For 15 generations, they have lived in Ngilngof village on Kei Island. Rudi writes poetry and stories and actively works for peace and youth in Ambon, the Central Moluccas, and the Kei Islands. He founded Bengkel Sastra Maluku and Bengkel Sastra Nuhu Evav, among others. In 2016, the MAARIF Institute Jakarta awarded Rudi for his work as a peace activist and journalist in the Moluccas. In 2017 he and his Moluccas poets made a voyage from Darwin to Ambon while reading a 1000-poetry marathon to commemorate the relationship between Darwin and Ambon in the past.

Laniyuk is a Larrakia, Kungarakan, Gurindji, and French writer and performer of poetry and short memoir. She contributed to the book Colouring the Rainbow: Blak, Queer and Trans Perspectives in 2015, has been published online in Djed Press and the Lifted Brow, as well as in print poetry collections such as UQP’s 2019 Solid Air and 2020 Fire Front. She received Canberra’s Noted Writers Festival’s 2017 Indigenous Writers Residency, Overland’s 2018 Writers Residency and was shortlisted for Overland’s 2018 Nakata-Brophy poetry prize. She runs poetry workshops for festivals, moderates panel discussions, and has given guest lectures at ANU and The University of Melbourne. She is currently completing her first collection of work to be published.

Gody Usnaat works as a religion teacher at saint Bonifasius-Ubrub-Dekenat Keerom—Jayapura Diocese. Every day he teaches and accompanies the children at the Ostia Ubrub halfway house. In 2020, he published his first poetry book, Mama Menganyam Noken. It was published by Papua Cendikia and was included in the 2020 Kusala Indonesian Literature short list. Mama Menganyam Noken is now published by Kompas. His most recent book of poetry is Bertemu Belalang. This book is one of the texts that caught the interest of the Jakarta Arts Council jury. In 2022 the book Bertemu Belalang was included in the list of the top three poetry books selected by Tempo Magazine.

Aprila Wayar is the first native Papuan female journalist and novelist after 2000. She was born in Jayapura on April 15, 1980. Several of her journalistic writings were published in a book, the Narrative of Papuan Social History, 2011. Several novels that have been published include Black Roses Without Roots (2009), Two Women (2013), Sentuh Papua (2018), Tambo Bunga Pala (2020), and The Secret Forest (2020). Her works have also been discussed at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival and the ASEAN Literary Festival. The film Aprila, which tells the story of her journalistic life in Papua, won the Tahiti Film Festival in February 2019. This film also won at the Ânûû-rû âboro Film Festival in Kanaki, New Caledonia, in July 2019. In Yogyakarta, she joined the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) and was elected Coordinator of the Division of Gender and Minority Groups. In September 2022, Aprilia, and several young Papuan journalists, built a new online alternative media, The Papua Journal.

RESIDENCY COORDINATOR

Francesca Rendle-Short is an award-winning novelist, memoirist and essayist. She is a writer and researcher interested in the affordances of language in/when writing the body, prepositional and queer thinking, ethical enquiry, the value of collaboration and community building, and trans-national literatures and literary practices. Her writing and scholarly praxis pays attention to form as well as content; it is experimental, idiosyncratic and playful in nature, attentive to whimsy and transgression. Her five books include two anthologies of Asia-Pacific and Australian writing The Near and the Far (Vol I and II; Scribe Publications) and the acclaimed novel-cum-memoir Bite Your Tongue (Spinifex Press). She is co-editor of A-Z of Creative Writing Methods (Bloomsbury) and is Professor of Creative Writing in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, co-founder of the non/fictionLab research group and WrICE (Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange).

Photo by Felix Trinh

RESIDENCY COORDINATOR

David Carlin is a Professor of Creative Writing at RMIT University, Australia. His books include the collaboratively authored The After-Normal (2019) and 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (2019), as well as Our Father Who Wasn’t There (2010) and The Abyssinian Contortionist (2015). He has co-edited volumes including A-Z of Creative Writing Methods (2023), The Near and the Far, Vol 1&2 (2016 and 2019), and Performing Digital (2015), and made award-winning works for radio, film, theatre and circus. David is co-President of the NonfictioNOW Conference, and co-founder of the WrICE Asia-Pacific Collaborative Residency program and the non/fictionLab research group.

Photo by Esther Carlin