First Words

In 2013 Ali Cobby Eckermann won the Kenneth Slessor Prize and Book Of The Year (NSW) for Ruby Moonlight. In 2014 she attended the International Writing Program in Iowa City. She received a Windham Campbell Award for Poetry from Yale University in 2017 and was awarded a Literature Fellowship by the Australian Council for the Arts in 2018.

Mandy Brown is a Peramangk/Ngarrindjeri senior woman who has been involved in poetry and short story writing since a child. Her involvement within the ATSI literary community is respected and although largely unpublished her works are in high demand for events around NAIDOC and Reconciliation week particularly in schools and community events as a preferred way of communicating and educating the wider community.

Natalie Harkin is a Narungga woman and poet from South Australia. She works at Flinders University with an interest in decolonising state archives, currently engaging archival-poetic methods to research and document Aboriginal women's domestic service and labour histories in SA. Her books include Dirty Words (Cordite Books), and Archival-poetics (Vagabond Press).

Dominic Guerrera is a Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna person and works as a Aboriginal Health Educator. Dominic is a poet, podcaster and co-farmer of Sovereign Soil Farm.

Steven Pappin is an Australian Barkindji man from the Mildura Riverine region. Living and working on Kaurna land. He is a well travelled man with a passion for preserving land and languages. Language/s have superpowers. We need to learn to use them wisely!

Celestine Rowe is a Pintupi luritja woman originating from Papunya, NT from a long line of musicians and artists, Celestine has travelled around Australia performing spoken word sharing political, uplifting and inspiring words.

Edoardo Crismani is the Coordinator of the South Australian First Nations Group. A descendant of the Wiradjuri people, Edoardo is a screenwriter, filmmaker, poet and short story writer working on his first novel manuscript.