Discipline: Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah in Conversation & A Reckoning: Panel Discussion

A night of solidarity and speaking up against censorship. Join us to celebrate the new novel by acclaimed Palestinian-Australian academic and author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, Discipline (UQP, 2025), followed by a panel discussion bringing together acclaimed writers and thinkers to examine how censorship is operating today in media, publishing, arts and academic spaces. Hosted by Australian-Palestinian writer and educator Dr Micaela Sahhar, featuring Evelyn Araluen and Sissy Austin with Randa Abdel-Fattah.

Book sales from Bookish on the night. Stick around afterwards to keep the conversation going - the venue will stay open until 9:30pm.

Presented by Free Palestine Central Victoria and Readers and Writers Against the Genocide. Proudly supported by Theatre Royal Castlemaine and Bookish.

Access: Head to the Theatre Royal website for full venue access information here.

Readers and Writers Against the Genocide: T-shirts here.

7pm Discipline: Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah in Conversation

Silence is complicity, but how do we confront the cost of speaking up?

Palestinian-Australian academic and author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s new novel Discipline (UQP, 2025) confronts questions of who gets to speak, the cost of silence, and what we owe our communities. With a focus on two of today’s most contested fields, academia and the media, Discipline tallies the price we all pay when those with privilege choose to remain silent.

Dr Abdel-Fattah, who has been the target of Pro-Israel groups for many years, says, “People of conscience know that if silence is demanded over a livestreamed genocide, then silence will eventually be demanded over everything else.”

Lauded as “blistering and brilliant,” by Melissa Lucashenko, Discipline is an urgent examination of what’s at stake when we speak truth to power. Join us for a night of solidarity and searing insight, with Dr Abdel-Fattah in conversation with Australian-Palestinian writer and educator Dr Micaela Sahhar.

7:45pm A Reckoning: Panel Discussion

We are witnessing a rising tide of censorship in arts, media and academic spaces, though the silencing of support for Palestine is not new. National institutions have bowed to parliamentary pressure, and from shielded stakeholders and lobbyist groups, with direct instances of defunding, deplatforming and the censorship of artwork and speech under the banner of ‘risk management’, ‘safe spaces’ and ‘social cohesion’.

How, then, do we maintain intellectual rigour and democratic principles within the arts, media, and academia and ensure it’s still possible to speak truth to power? Acts of censorship disguised as risk management not only erase Palestinian voices but also set a dangerous precedent for the cultural sector at large. What does it mean for the integrity of our institutions when truth-telling is treated as a threat?

This discussion brings together acclaimed writers and thinkers working across media, publishing, and academia to examine how censorship is operating today, how institutional language masks complicity, and how we can safeguard intellectual rigour, artistic freedom, and democratic principles in the face of systemic silencing.

Featuring Randa Abdel-Fattah, Evelyn Araluen and Sissy Austin. Hosted by Micaela Sahhar.

Praise for Discipline

“Randa Abdel-Fattah is a remarkable writer. With humility and care she asks that we do not turn away from the people of Gaza. Discipline is a novel that reminds us that each story is a shared story, demanding our attention. Discipline is an invitation to be in this world together. To do otherwise is to live a life of denial. I am indebted to Randa's generosity.” - Tony Birch

“With razor-sharp insight, this brilliant and captivating novel is a fierce cry for action – a demand to fight for justice in order to safeguard the humanity of generations to come.” - Samah Sabawi

“For those who seek to sincerely understand the endless obstacles one must face in the body of an Arab, a Palestinian, a Muslim; Discipline is the place to begin.” - Michael Mohammed Ahmed

About the Speakers

Randa Abdel-Fattah is an ARC Future Fellow at Macquarie University. Her research areas cover Islamophobia, race, Palestine, the war on terror, youth identities and social movement activism. Dr Abdel-Fattah is also a former lawyer and the award-winning author of twelve books for children and young adults, which have been translated into over thirteen languages. She has won and been shortlisted and longlisted for awards including the Australian Book Industry Award, the Australian Book of The Year Award, the Victorian and NSW premiers’ literary awards, the Stella Prize, the Children’s Book Council Award, Middle East Outreach Council USA and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Her bilingual English and Arabic picture story book 11 Words for Love, illustrated by Maxine Beneba Clarke, was shortlisted for the 2023 Prime Minister’s Literary Award.

Micaela Sahhar is an Australian-Palestinian writer and educator living on unceded Wurundjeri Country. Her essays, poetry and commentary have appeared in Cordite, Meanjin, Overland, Rabbit and Sydney Review of Books, among others. She is a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellow (2021), a grant recipient from the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund (2022), and was commended for the Peter Blazey Fellowship (2024). Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: an encyclopaedia of a Palestinian family (NewSouth, 2025) is her first book.

Evelyn Araluen is a Goorie and Koori poet, editor and researcher. Born and raised on Dharug Country and in the broader Western Sydney Black community, she now lives on Wurundjeri Country where she works as a lecturer at the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, as a co-editor of Overland Literary Journal and Chairperson for the Board of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies. Her debut poetry collection, Dropbear, won the 2022 Stella Prize and the Australian Book Industry Award’s 2022 Small Publisher’s Adult Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the premier’s awards of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. Her work has also received the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize and a Melbourne Prize Career Development Award.

Sissy Eileen Austin is a Gunditjmara, Keerraay Woorroong, Djab Wurrung woman and former member of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria.

She is a published author who has been published in Queer Literature’s publication ‘Inside Out’ and Monash Universities Museum of Arts publication ‘Tree Story’.

Sissy has written for IndigenousX, The Guardian, The Age, Mamma Mia and her personal blog ‘Silent No More’. As a human rights activist, she advocates predominantly for ending the systematic removal of Aboriginal children from family, and ending gendered violence against women.

Sissy identifies as a proud Blak Lesbian and loves long distance running, recently completing the New York Marathon as a graduate of the Indigenous Marathon Project 2023.