Stella Day Out I Western Sydney Creative Supper Club

It’s finally here! Stella Day Out 2025 Sydney will be held in Parramatta as a collaborative mini-festival supported by Western Sydney Creative, the Writing and Society Research Centre and the School of HCA (WSU). This thrilling evening is a chance to come together and celebrate our shared love of creative cultures and literary communities across our region. WSC’s popular Supper Club format will meet Stella’s vision in supporting women and non-binary writers via grass-roots literary festivals. The Sydney Stella Day Out 2025 offers guests a chance to share dinner while enjoying a thought-provoking series of conversations about contemporary writing, alongside high-energy creative readings in the stunning Margaret Whitlam Galleries. Come along and celebrate the best in new writing from Western Sydney.

We are fortunate to run the Sydney Stella Day 2025 in partnership with the timely exhibition 'Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land - It's Our Birthright'. Guest Curated by Kyra Kum-Sing, this exhibition explores Aboriginal self-determination through art and activism and features artworks by artists and community members from Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative. The exhibition in the Margaret Whitlam Galleries is on display until 28 August. As a prelude to the festival, eminent novelist Professor Gail Jones will run a creative writing workshop for WSU postgraduate students (3pm-5pm).

'ALWAYS WAS, ALWAYS WILL BE ABORIGINAL LAND - IT'S OUR BIRTHRIGHT':
STELLA DAY OUT plus SUPPER CLUB – WESTERN SYDNEY UNIVERSITY (WSC/WSRC)

• 5:00pm: Drinks/nibbles and chance to view 'Always Was, Always Will Be' exhibition (Margaret Whitlam Galleries)

• 5:30pm: Welcome to Country and event welcome (MC Margaret Hancock) (seminar room)

• 5:45pm: Opening conversation with Dr Mykaela Saunders and Associate Professor Kate Fagan (seminar room)

• 6:30pm: Dinner

• 7:15pm: Creative readings with Dr Mykaela Saunders, Jumaana Abdu, Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, and Sara M. Saleh (‘Always Was, Always Will Be’, Margaret Whitlam Gallery)

• 7:45pm: Closing conversation with Jumaana Abdu, Randa Abdel-Fattah; moderated by Sara M. Saleh (seminar room)

• 8.30pm: Closing remarks by Dr Kat Sandbach (Deputy Dean, SoHCA)

An event jointly supported by the Stella Organisation and Western Sydney University (Western Sydney Creative, the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and the Writing and Society Research Centre).  

MYKAELA SAUNDERS is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer, teacher and researcher, and the editor of This All Come Back Now, the Aurealis Award–winning, world-first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction (UQP, 2022). Her new book Always Will Be won the 2022 David Unaipon Award and was long-listed for the 2025 Stella Prize. Mykaela’s novel manuscript Last Rites of Spring was also shortlisted for the Unaipon Award in 2020, and received a Next Chapter Fellowship in 2021. Mykaela has won the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize, the National Indigenous Story Award, the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers Prize for creative non-fiction and the University of Sydney’s Sister Alison Bush Graduate Medal for Indigenous research. Of Dharug descent, Mykaela belongs to the Tweed Goori community through her Bundjalung and South Sea Islander family. Mykaela has worked in Aboriginal education since 2003, and at the tertiary level since 2012. They are currently an Indigenous postdoctoral fellow at Macquarie University, researching First Nations speculative fiction.

JUMAANA ABDU is a Dal Stivens Award winner and an alumnus of the Wheeler Centre Next Chapter program. Her work features in Thyme Travellers (Roseway Publishing), an international anthology of Palestinian speculative fiction. She has been published elsewhere in Kill Your Darlings, Westerly, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Liminal, Overland, Debris and New Australian Fiction 2024. During the day, she is a medical doctor. Her debut novel Translations (Penguin) was shortlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize.

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.

SARA M. SALEH is a writer/poet and human rights lawyer of Palestinian, Egyptian, and Lebanese heritage. Her prose, poetry and non-fiction have been widely published in English and Arabic across dozens of literary platforms, and she has shared her work globally on stages from Brooklyn to Bangalore. Sara made history in Australia as the first poet to win both the prestigious Peter Porter and the Judith Wright Poetry Prizes (2020-21). Her debut novel, Songs for the Dead and the Living (Affirm, 2023), and her poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls (UQP, 2023), have received multiple national and international prizes and shortlistings between them, and won the 2024 Barbara Jefferis Award and 2024 Anne Elder Award respectively. She is the recipient of the inaugural Affirm fellowship for Sweatshop writers, and writers residencies at Varuna, Amant New York and Banff Arts Center, among other honours and accolades.

KATE FAGAN is a writer, musician and scholar whose third volume, First Light, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Age Book of the Year Award. She directs The Writing Zone, a mentoring program for emerging writers and arts workers from Western Sydney, and is a former Editor of How2 magazine (US). Kate is also an internationally esteemed songwriter whose album Diamond Wheel won the National Film and Sound Archive’s Folk Recording Award. She is currently Director of the WSU Writing and Society Research Centre and Chair of the Sydney Review of Books Advisory Board. Her most recent book is Song in the Grass (Giramondo, 2024).