Histories of Dispossession and Climate Futures: Writing the Land

This panel talk is a part of an event series: Land Justice and Climate Futures, presented by Sujatha Fernandes. The series brings together Indigenous and people of colour scholars, writers, and activists to explore land justice at a time of climate crisis and mass labour migration.

Historical and speculative fiction writers narrate histories of dispossession. They present a window into worlds both past and present that offer visions of liberation, land back, and Indigenous sovereignty. This panel brings together three writers of these genres to reflect on how fiction can be a way of reckoning with ongoing injustice and imagining alternative futures. The panel explores what it means to write the land.

Hybrid attendance is available for this event. If you would like to join online, please select the 'Online' ticket type and a zoom link will be sent 48 hours prior to the email address provided.

SPEAKERS
Mykaela Saunders is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer and the author of Always Will Be (UQP 2024) which won the David Unaipon Award, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction and the NSW Literary Award Indigenous Writers Prize, and longlisted for The Stella Prize. Mykaela edited This All Come Back Now (UQP 2022), the world’s first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction, which won an Aurealis Award. Mykaela has won other prizes for fiction, poetry, essays and research, including the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize and the Rosemary van den Berg Prize for First Nations Criticism. Mykaela is a postdoctoral research fellow at Macquarie University researching First Nations speculative fiction.

Sara Haddad is a writer and editor who lives and works on Gadigal land. A Lebanese Australian, she has worked in publishing for over 35 years. She is the author of The Sunbird, the younger readers’ version of which will be published by UQP in February 2026.

Eman Abdelhadi is a scholar, organizer and writer based in Chicago. She is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on Arab and Muslim communities in the United States, and has been cited by NPR, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and other outlets. She co-wrote the revolutionary sci-fi novel Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072 (Common Notions Press 2022), and she writes a regular column on Palestine and politics for In These Times Magazine. She is a long-time organizer in the movement for Palestinian liberation and is currently active through Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine at UChicago.

Co-sponsored by the Discipline of Sociology and Criminology, the Discipline of Anthropology, and the Powerful Stories Network.