Trick of Light

Jumaana Abdu is the author of Translations (Vintage), her debut novel. She 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, and Debris.

Alison J Barton is a Wiradjuri poet widely published in Australian and international journals. In 2023 she won several fellowships with the Australian National Writer’s House (Varuna House) and her poetry was recognised in numerous prizes. In both 2022 and 2023, Alison’s work appeared in Best of Australian Poems. She was the inaugural winner of the 2023 University of Cambridge First Nations Writer-in-Residence Fellowship, and took up a two-month writing residency in 2024 with SomoS Arts (Berlin, Germany). Her first full-length collection of poetry, Not Telling, will be published in August with Puncher & Wattmann.

Vahideh Eisaei, is an Iranian-Australian storyteller, a Qanun player and a composer. Evolving into a storyteller, she blends poetry, spoken words, and music to reconstruct classical poetry with contemporary nuances. Vahideh’s work delves into the narratives, elements and motifs embedded in Persian music and poetry, crafting compositions and text that resonate with her experiences as a migrant woman in a new land. Most recently, she wrote, composed and performed in Love’s Universe is Inside You, directed by Michael Kantor, at the Melbourne Recital Centre and Aranya Festival In China.

Mariwakiterangi Paekau (She/They) (Tainui, Waikato, Maniapoto, Kahungunu ki Heretaunga) is a multidisciplinary artist.
She is currently halfway through her Te Reo Māori me ōna tikanga degree at Te Wānanga o Raukawa. Her primary work is poetry, one of her poems was displayed in Auckland for Pride (2022). She has been on the Rangatahi panel for Verb Writers Festival (2022, 2023) and was one of the Micro residents for Verb (2023). You can find her poetry on her Instagram @mariwakiterangi

Sara M. Saleh is a writer, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Egyptian migrants. Her writing has been published widely in English and Arabic. In 2021, Sara made history as the first poet to win both the Peter Porter and Judith Wright Poetry Prizes. Sara’s debut novel, Songs for the Dead and the Living (Affirm Press, 2023) was shortlisted for a NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Her debut poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls (UQP, 2023), was shortlisted for the 2024 ALS Gold Medal, the ALS Mary Gilmore Award and won the 2023 Anne Elder Award.

Xiaole Zhan (they/them) is a Chinese-New Zealand writer and composer based in Naarm. They are the recipient of the 2024 Kat Muscat Fellowship and a 2024 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship. They were the winner of the 2023 Kill Your Darlings Non-Fiction Prize for their essay-memoir ‘Think An Empty Room, Moonly With Phoneglow’ about growing up in a Pākehā-Chinese family, as well as the winner of the 2023 Landfall Young Writers Essay Competition for their essay ‘Muscle Memory’ exploring music and the body. As a composer, Zhan was the 2024 New North Emerging Artist.