The Emerging Writers’ Festival work, learn and play largely on the land of the Kulin nation, and pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.

EWF celebrates the history and creativity of the world’s oldest living culture.

Enter site

Free, Performance & Creative Performance

Opening Night: LIB[ERA]TION

Globally and on this very continent, First Nations peoples continue to resist colonialism and its weapons. Through deep community care, activism, and the power imbued in storytelling, First Nations writers and artists have long imagined futures that welcome revolution.

To mark the opening EWF24, Guest Curator Mackenzie Lee asks: What does an Era of Liberation look like, and how is writing both a tool and an act of liberation, for the self and the collective?

Join these storytellers as they imagine what an Era of Liberation means for the present and beyond.


Accessibility

Auslan, Wheelchair, service animal, onsite parking

Thursday 5 September, 7PM


narrm ngargu Library
141 Therry St, Melbourne VIC 3000

Featuring...

Mackenzie Lee

Mackenzie Lee is a queer First Nations poet. With Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman, and Karajarri ancestry, mixed with Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Anglo-Australian heritage, they are a creative whose ties to culture, country, and saltwater connects them to their storyteller ancestors. Lee writes a variety of poems in response and reaction to the world around them.

Maggie Knight-Williams

Maggie is a young queer writer of Gamilaroi and settler ancestry with Ngunnawal kinship ties. She makes her home on Ngunnawal dhawura, studying law and going to parties. Her work is a natural byproduct of her navigation of relationships with Country, memory, and women.

moirra.

moirra. is a Yorta Yorta, Boon Wurrung and Jewish transsexual artist, writer and poet living on Wurundjeri Country. Xer work focuses on Blak Queerness and Queer Blakness.

Ari Mills

Ari is a proud Kuku Yalanji and Nangu multidisciplinary artist with a strong focus in poetry and fashion design. The subject matter they focus on is the ways Love Studies coincide with Country, exploring these relationships in the experiences of Black Queer Peoples.

Darcy Hytt

Darcy Hytt is a palawa storyteller and arts worker living on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. They explore relationality, futurity, power, and knowledge within contexts of queerness, disability justice, and Blak liberation.