Rivers of Reason: Blak & Arab Writers in Conversation

Lineup

• More details about Ali Cobby Eckermann

  Ali Cobby Eckermann

  Ali Cobby Eckermann is a Yankunytjatjara grandmother, poet and Stolen Generations survivor. Her poetry is written for her people and red sand country. Her first collection 'little bit long time' was scribed in the desert launching her literary career in 2009. Ali was awarded a Windham Campbell Award for Poetry from Yale in 2017. In 2024 'she is the earth' won the NSW Literary Book Of The Year award.

• More details about Celestine Rowe

  Celestine Rowe

  Celestine Rowe is a proud Pintupi and Luritja woman, born in central Australia Alice in 1983. She grew up in Alice Springs, where she started to write at age 16. Celestine Rowe is known to be a deeply political writer, an inspiration and a hard worker, who transfers her poems into music to inspire people through her words and movement. Celestine won the National Poetry Slam for the Alice Springs Desert Festival in 2011.

• More details about Chelsea Watego

  Chelsea Watego

  Professor Chelsea Watego (formerly Bond) is a Munanjahli and South Sea Islander woman with over 20 years of experience working within Indigenous health as a health worker and researcher. She is the Executive Director of QUT’s Carumba Institute, and her scholarship has drawn attention to the role of race in the production of health inequalities. Her current ARC Discovery Grant seeks to build an Indigenist Health Humanities as a new field of research; one that is committed to the survival of Indigenous peoples locally and globally, foregrounding Indigenous intellectual sovereignty and leading to the formation of an Indigenous critical race theory. She is a prolific writer and public intellectual, having written for IndigenousX, NITV, The Guardian, and The Conversation. She is a founding board member of Inala Wangarra, an Indigenous community development association within her community, a Director of the Institute for Collaborative Race Research, but most importantly, she is also a proud mum to five beautiful children. Her debut book Another Day in the Colony, published by UQ Press, was released in November 2021 and met with critical acclaim. Her latest book is Blak Thoughts Matter (Common Room, 2025).

• More details about Courtney Jaye

  Courtney Jaye

  Courtney Jaye is a Ngarrindjeri woman with Malaysian heritage who grew up all around Australia. She is currently living and working on Kaurna country, with her writing and reviews found in Kill Your Darlings, InReview, Sinister Wisdom, Splinter and Southerly. She writes in the hope that other generations can see themselves in literature.

• More details about Daniel Nour

  Daniel Nour

  Daniel Nour is an award winning Egyptian-­Australian writer and journalist. His work explores the intersection of queer and migrant experiences and has featured in The New York Times, the ABC, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Mascara Literary Review, The Big Issue and The Guardian. His debut memoir, How to Dodge Flying Sandals (Affirm Press), was released in May 2025.

• More details about Dominic Guerrera

  Dominic Guerrera

  Dominic Guerrera is a Kaurna Ngarrindjeri writer, curator and First Nations Editor at Cordite Review.

• More details about Jayda Wilson

  Jayda Wilson

  Jayda Wilson is a proud Gugada and Wirangu emerging artist living and working on unceded Kaurna Yarta. Jayda's practice is a journey to reclaiming their mother tongue through the (re)telling of family history with their visual practice acting as a site for (re)memory and (re)archiving. By working in mediums of sound and print they ground themselves culturally and affirm sovereignty through Gugada and Wirangu wangga, embedded in country on the Far West Coast of South Australia. Jayda was the 2025 recipient of the Create SA and InReview First Nations Arts Writing Mentorship.

• More details about K.A Ren Wyld

  K.A Ren Wyld

  K.A Ren Wyld is a writer of Martu descent, living on the coast south of Adelaide. Ren's fourth book, Whichway Shimmering Dust, will be published by UQP early 2027.

• More details about Irene Watson

  Irene Watson

  Irene Watson is an activist, educator, and writer, is a Research Professor in Law at Adelaide University. Irene belongs to the Potaruwutj, Meintangk, Bunganditj and Tanganekald First Peoples of the Coorong and SE in what is now known as South Australia. From the early 1970s, Irene has been active in the struggle for decolonisation and recognition of First Peoples right to self-determination and freedom from the colonial occupation of our lands. From a young age she has protested in early anti-Vietnam War events in Adelaide and also the Springbok tour demonstrations in 1971. She participated at the Tent Embassy in Canberra campaigns from 1973 onwards. Irene was involved as a committee member in the establishment of the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement in the mid-1970s and was the first Aboriginal person from South Australia to graduate in law. Since that time Irene has advised and worked to bring attention to the genocidal impact of Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Child Protection policies in the removal of Aboriginal children and protecting country from ecocide. Irene worked in Geneva on drafting the UNDRIP from 1989-1994, departing from further participation when UN state members came to control, determine and ultimately weaken the draft. Since then, she has made interventions before the UN Human Rights Council Expert Advisory Committee and the UN CERD on the current position of Indigenous peoples. She has published Looking at you, looking at me (2002), Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism and International Law: Raw Law (2015), Indigenous Peoples are subjects of international law, (2018) and numerous articles and book chapters.

• More details about Micaela Sahhar

  Micaela Sahhar

  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, and Southerly among others, and in several anthology collections. She is a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellow and past recipient of the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel fund program. Her first book, Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: an encyclopaedia of a Palestinian family was shortlisted for the 2026 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards for Nonfiction.

• More details about Najwan Darwish

  Najwan Darwish

  Najwan Darwish is a poet from Jerusalem, Palestine. He has published nine poetry books in Arabic and his work has been translated into over twenty languages. New York Review Books, which published the English translation of his books Nothing More to Lose (NYRB Poets, 2014) and Exhausted on the Cross (NYRB Poets, 2021) describes him as, “one of the foremost Arabic-language poets”. He has received several awards, most recently: The Sarah Maguire Prize (UK, 2022), the Cilento International Poetry Prize (Italy, 2023), and Le Grand prix de Poésie étrangère (France, 2024). N. Darwish has co-founded and directed several cultural and artistic projects throughout the Arab world and served as an advisor to several Palestinian and Arab cultural initiatives and literary Festivals. He has held many key positions in cultural journalism and has been the Chief Cultural Editor of the Arabic-language London-based newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed since 2014.

• More details about Natalie Harkin

  Natalie Harkin

  Natalie Harkin is a Narungga poet and creative arts-based Research Fellow with the Critical Indigenous Studies team at Flinders University, Kaurna Yarta. She is passionate about archival justice, engaging archival-poetic methods to document community Memory Stories, and Indigenous Living-Legacy archive innovations for our time. Her books include Dirty Words (Cordite Books, 2015), Archival-poetics (Vagabond Press, 2019), and APRON-SORROW / SOVEREIGN-TEA (Wakefield Press, 2025).

• More details about Randa Abdel-Fattah

  Randa Abdel-Fattah

  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, Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and Prime Minister’s Literary Award.

• More details about Samar Sammour

  Samar Sammour

  Samar Sammour is a Palestinian woman and daughter of Nakba survivors, currently residing on unceded Kaurna country. She is a healthcare worker, mother, and founder of Tatreez and Table. Her work and words are rooted in community, preservation of culture, and liberation.

• More details about Sin AD

  Sin AD

  Sin AD is a Lebanese, Queer, and Neurodivergent emerging artist in diaspora, currently residing on Kaurna Yarta. Their poetry is political, emotional, and personal. They focus on themes of resistance, cultural ties, and authenticity to oneself. Their poem titled Libnen / Al Jnoub is published in the 80.1 First, The Future. edition of Sourtherly Journal.