AustLit

Professor Anita Heiss is a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales and is one of Australia’s most prolific and well-known authors of Aboriginal literature. She has a PhD in Communication and Media which resulted in a history of Indigenous publishing titled Dhuuluu-Yala : To Talk Straight. Other published works include the historical novel Who Am I? : The Diary of Mary Talence : Sydney, 1937, the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, which she co-edited with Peter Minter.

Kerry Kilner was the Director and General Editor of AustLit and Research Fellow at The University of Queensland from 2002 to 2020. She was the coordinator of BlackWords since its establishment in 2006. 

Kilner was born in Singapore and lived there for less than a year. Her father, who was born in Fiji, the child of an Australian father and Samoan mother, was an officer in the Australian Defence Forces and as a result she lived in numerous places along the eastern seaboard of Australia during a peripatetic childhood.

Dr Peter Minter is a leading Australian poet, editor and scholar, and is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, School of Letters, Arts and Media at the University of Sydney. He shares English, Scottish and Aboriginal heritage, and has taught Aboriginal studies at the University of Newcastle, the University of Western Sydney and the University of Sydney.

His books include blue grass and Empty Texas, which won the Age Poetry Book of the Year Award, and his poetry is widely published and regularly anthologised in Australia and internationally.

Gus Worby was born in Stockport, England in 1946. He migrated to Australia with his family in 1954 and settled in Geelong where he attended Geelong Grammar School.He studied Arts at Melbourne University and there became involved with student and professional theatre. He was awarded three Murray Sutherland and University Union Prizes for Acting and Directing, studied for a Masters degree at Melbourne University and worked as tutor, dramaturg and actor with the Melbourne Theatre Company.

In 1971 he moved to South Australia to join the Flinders University Drama Discipline under Wal Cherry where he completed his PhD whilst teaching in both the Drama Centre and Drama theory streams.

Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi is apart of the Zagareb and Magaram/Dauareb tribes of Mer (Murray) Island. Their bloodline also reaches the village of Fahefa, Tonga. Meleika is a writer, poet, rapper, film and book critic. Her writing goes against the grain of colonial story telling, with her work always paying tribute to her roots, in ancestral and lyrical ways.

Irene Howe worked as a researcher and indexer for BlackWords : Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers and Storytellers, a subset of AustLit (Australian Literature Resource) database from 2010 to 2017. She graduated from the University of Queensland in 2012, with an Honours degree in Archaeology and subsequently undertook a Masters of Museum Studies. In 2019, she joined the Australian Armed Forces in Canberra.

Wiradjuri woman Dr Jeanine Leane, from south-west New South Wales, grew up on a sheep farm near Gundagai and was educated in Gundagai, Wagga Wagga, Armidale, and Canberra. In 1983, Jeanine was conferred her BA in Literature and History from the University of New England, Armidale, and in 1984 she was awarded a Graduate Diploma of Education from the University of Canberra. After a long career in teaching at secondary and tertiary levels, Jeanine was conferred her PhD in the literature of Aboriginal representation by the University of Technology, Sydney, in 2011.

Cathy Craigie is a Gamilaroi and Anaiwon woman form Northern NSW. She has worked in Aboriginal Affairs for over thirty years. One of the original founders of Koori Radio and former Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council, Craigie was also Deputy Director-General of the NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs. She has written several plays and essays and has worked part time as an Aboriginal arts consultant.

Yaritji Green completed Certificate III in Creative Writing at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education in Alice Springs in 2002. In 2003, Green commenced a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Creative Writing) at Flinders University, South Australia. By 2006, she graduated from her Bachelor of Creative Arts (Creative Writing. At the end of 2006, Green became a Research Assistant for the Black Words Database. The following year, she started a librarian traineeship at Flinders University Library.

Elizabeth Hodgson is a Wiradjuri woman, born in Wellington, New South Wales. She spent her childhood in a home for fair-skinned Aboriginal children in a Sydney suburb.

After spending many years travelling, Elizabeth decided to make Wollongong, New South Wales, her home. She has been officially welcomed into Wadi Wadi country and has explored her Aboriginality and spirituality in depth since moving there.

From 2003-2008, Hodgson sat on the Literature and History panel of Arts NSW and the Indigenous Arts Reference Group and during that time she was chair of the South Coast Writers' Centre.

Jake Milroy is a researcher and writer from Western Australia and is the son of David Milroy (q.v.) and Ruth De Beer. He is a Palyku person from the Pilbara of Western Australia and belongs to the Banaka skin group. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Australia, Jake Milroy began working for Black Words and became a board member of Yirra Yaakin. He is actively engaged in sharing Aboriginal culture.

Writer and poet, Samantha Faulkner is from the Badu and Moa Islands in the Torres Strait and the Yadhaigana and Wuthuthi/Wuthati peoples of Cape York Peninsula. She has represented women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interests on local, state and national boards and has been a Director of the ACT Torres Strait Islanders Corporation.

Faulkner began her love of writing poetry when she was a teenager. It was during the 1990s, that she received a research grant from the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies to research and document her grandfather's life story, which led to the publication of her work, Life B'long Ali Drummond : A Life in the Torres Strait in 2007.

Yvette Holt is a member of the Bidjara and Wakaman Nations of central and far north Queensland (Atherton Tablelands). She grew up in the Brisbane community of Inala, where her family have lived for more than forty years.

A graduate from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Yvette has a degree in Adult Education & Community Management (Business). In 2003 Yvette received the UTS Human Rights Award in the category of Reconciliation for 'her outstanding contribution towards the elevation of social justice for Indigenous Australians.

Carolyn Moylan is a Nyungar woman, married with two children and seven grandchildren. Carolyn has seven sisters (one deceased) and two brothers (one deceased) and her extended family members are the Haywards and Jacksons from the Southwest and Wheatbelt regions of Western Australia.

As an active member of the Aboriginal community she has participated in, and facilitated cultural awareness workshops over the years. Carolyn went to third year at high school, but her academic achievements as an adult include the completion of the Aboriginal Bridging Course, a Bachelor of Arts (English) in 1994 at Curtin University and, following this enrolled in a Diploma of Education (Primary) at Murdoch University in 1995 (incomplete).

Emily McConochie was born in Maryborough, Qld. She’s a Wakka Wakka woman with German and Scottish heritage. Emily grew up in South-East Queensland travelling between Hervey Bay, Brisbane and Toowoomba. She graduated from the University of Queensland with a Bachelor of Science (Biomedical Science) and a Master of Development Practice and has an Associate Diploma from the Australian College of Music in Speech and Drama. She is a community development worker, a keen social justice advocate, gardener and an amateur comedian.