Imagined Worlds
Description
Three innovative authors of speculative fiction – John Morrissey (Bird Deity), Romy Ash (Mantle) and Rhett Davis (Arborescence) – discuss how their imagined worlds reflect the complex strangeness of our own. With Wirolomin Noongar writer of fiction, non-fiction and verse, Claire G. Coleman.
Lineup
John Morrissey
John Morrissey is a Melbourne writer of Kalkadoon descent. He was the winner of the 2020 Indigenous Writers Mentorship and runner-up for the Nakata Brophy Prize in 2018. John’s debut Firelight won an Aurealis Award and a Queensland Literary Award, and in 2024 he was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist. Bird Deity is his first novel.
Romy Ash
Romy Ash is the author of Floundering, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, Commonwealth Book Prize and Prime Minister’s literary awards; and a children’s picture book called As Bright as a Rainbow. She was awarded the Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists of the Year Award for 2013. She has been published in The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, The Griffith Review, Meanjin, Best Australian Short Stories and Best Australian Essays, among others. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne with her family.
Rhett Davis
Rhett Davis is the author of Arborescence, a novel about what trees might do if we weren’t careful. It was shortlisted for the Aurealis Award for Science Fiction and longlisted for the Indie Book Awards and the ALS Gold Medal. His first novel, Hovering, was about a city that wasn’t sure that it should be there. It won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and was shortlisted for the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize and the Aurealis Award for Science Fiction. Rhett has also been a manager, a consultant, a business analyst, a bookseller, and a creative writing tutor. He lives and writes mostly on Wadawurrung country in Geelong.
Claire G. Coleman
Claire G. Coleman is a Wirolomin Noongar writer of fiction, non-fiction and verse. She has written 3 novels, Terra Nullius, The Old Lie and Enclave (all published with Hachette Australia) and a book of non-fiction, Lies, Damned Lies (Ultimo press). Her fiction, essays and art criticism has been published in dozens of publications and she is a highly regarded public speaker and panellist. She is a founding member of the Centre for Reworlding and a founding collaborator in Creative Climate.
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