Words to Sing the World Alive

Dr Debra Dank (Terraglossia) joins First Nations poets from The Poet’s Voice for a reading and panel discussion celebrating First Nations languages from across the continent.

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DEBRA DANK. Gudanji/Wakaja and Kalkadoon woman from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory, Dr Debra Dank works as an Enterprise Fellow with the University of South Australia. She is interested in multiform narrative and what impacts semiotics has on that practice across different communities. Her book, We Come with This Place, won numerous awards in 2023, including four NSW Premier's Literary Awards, and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. It was also shortlisted for The Stella Prize. Debra is publishing her next book in 2025.

Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet, essayist and critic from south-west NSW. She is the recipient of the David Unaipon Award for her first novel Purple Threads; and her latest book is the poetry collection Gawimarra: Gathering was released in 2024. Jeanine's essays in the areas of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness, poetry, and creative nonfiction have been published widely. She was the recipient of the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize, and she has won the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Prize for Poetry twice. In 2023 she won the David Harold Tribe Award for Poetry, Australia’s richest poetry prize. She has been the recipient of a Red Room Poetry Fellowship and two Australian Research Council Fellowships for research into Blak writing and storytelling. Jeanine taught Creative Writing and Aboriginal Literature for many years at the University of Melbourne. She is the poetry editor of Meanjin; and she continues to write between Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country and the East Kulin Nations of Naarm.

Evelyn Araluen is a poet, researcher and co-editor of Overland Literary Journal. Her widely published criticism, fiction and poetry has been awarded the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship, and a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund grant. Born and raised on Dharug country, she is a descendant of the Bundjalung Nation. Evelyn's debut collection Dropbear was shortlisted for the 2021 Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection and the 2022 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and won the 2022 Stella Prize. It was Highly Commended for the 2021 Anne Elder Award. Her forthcoming poetry collection The Rot is due for release November 2025 with UQP.