Autumn Rites: A Reading with Alena Lodkina, Leah Jing McIntosh, Sally Olds, Ursula Robinson-Shaw and Isabella Trimboli

A one off reading event of Melbourne writers, reading new essays, short stories and poems organised by Seventh studio artist Isabella Trimboli. 

Alena Lodkina → Alena Lodkina is a Russian-born Australian filmmaker. She directed and co-wrote her first feature film Strange Colours (2017), which debuted at Venice Film Festival. Petrol (2022), her second feature film as writer and director, premiered at Locarno Film Festival and later screened at the 52nd edition of New Directors/New Films presented by the Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Centre in New York. She has made fiction and documentary short films, and has written about film. 

Leah Jing McIntosh → Leah Jing McIntosh is a critic, researcher, and the founding editor of Liminal, an anti-racist literary platform that seeks to support and elevate racialised artists and writers, with a focus on the Asian Australian experience.  Over the last five years, Liminal has published over 200 longform interviews, and commissioned award-winning art and writing. As part of the Liminal project, Leah has published books, produced literary events, created mentorships and fellowships, and established national literary prizes, to create new spaces and opportunities for her community. In 2020, she edited the critically-acclaimed fiction anthology Collisions (Pantera Press, 2020), and in 2022, she is editing Against Disappearance, a collection of essays on memory by First Nations writers and writers of colour (Pantera Press).  She holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from University College London, and is currently completing her PhD at the University of Melbourne. Her research is concerned with the possibilities of diasporic self-representation, and the fracturing of literary form. Leah’s work is underpinned by an anti-racist, anti-colonial praxis, which means she sometimes gets into trouble. 

Sally Olds → Sally Olds is a writer from Queensland living in Narrm/Melbourne. Her work has been published in Sydney Review of Books, un Magazine, AQNB, by the Powerhouse Museum, the Institute of Modern Art, among other publications. In 2020, she was shortlisted for the Sydney Review of Books/Copywright Agency’s Emerging Critic Fellowship. In 2021, she was longlisted for Griffith Review’s Emerging Voices competition. From 2013-2016, Sally was an editor of Bumf, which published short and experimental pieces of writing. Her first book, People who Lunch, was released in 2022.

Ursula Robinson-Shaw → Ursula Robinson-Shaw is a writer from Aotearoa, living in Naarm/Melbourne. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and co-director of Sick Leave.

Isabella Trimboli → Isabella Trimboli is a critic, essayist and editor living in Melbourne. Her writing on film, literature and art has appeared in publications such as Metrograph Journal, Sydney Review of Books, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, Artguide and The Guardian.