Hasitha Adhikariarachchi
Hasitha Adhikariarachchi is a writer and raised in Sri Lanka, now calls Sydney home. Inspired by futility of everyday sexism, her work includes poetry and short fiction. Hasitha is the runner-up of the Poetry Section of International Women’s Day Writing Competition organized by South Coast Writers Centre. Hasitha has been featured by the Macquarie University in ‘Emerging Writers Festival – 2018’ and ‘South Asian Film, Arts & Literature Festival – 2017’. She won the ‘NSW Multilingual Poetry Slam 2017’ and performed in Embellishment in 2023.
Sienna Brown
Sienna Brown was born in Kingston, Jamaica, grew up in Toronto, Canada and now lives in Sydney, Australia. In Canada, she was a professional dancer with Toronto Dance Theatre, Canada’s premiere contemporary dance company. She’s a graduate of the prestigious Australian Film & TV School (AFTRS) where she gained a BA in television directing and editing. After graduating, she formed Pine Street Films, through which she produced, directed and wrote documentaries and educational films.
Her debut novel Master of My Fate, published in 2019 by Penguin Random House, won the MUD Literary Prize at Adelaide Writers Week for the best debut novel by an Australian writer and was shortlisted for the ARA Historical Fiction Novel Prize, in 2020.
In 2021, she was commissioned by ABC Radio National, the History Listen Series to create Caribbean Convicts in Australia, a podcast based on her research for Master.
In 2022, she was appointed Research Associate at Western Sydney University. Her position is being funded by a three-year Australia Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project Grant administered through the Writing & Society Research Centre. Under the auspices of the grant, she has just completed her second novel, Love Under A Tropical Sun set in Australia and Jamaica. She developed and co-produced Callaloo & Wattleseed, a unique one-day symposium, that focused for the first time on the cultural contributions of Caribbean Australians, in the arena of music, education, literature and performance.
She is currently working with The History Lab at UTS’s Impact Studios to produce further podcasts on the history of Caribbean people in Australia. Sienna’s also a Judge for the ARA Historical Fiction Novel Prize, 2024 which will be awarded in October.
Sienna is represented by Gaby Naher, Left Bank Literary.
Lliane Clarke
Lliane is the Founding Artistic Director of Voices of Women and has directed Voices of Women’s program of storytelling workshops, live shows and film since 2018. She directed the feature film CLEARWAY (CORONA) in 2020, co-directed the award-winning feature film Entanglement in 2021 and the short films Our Mob, Invisibility, The Dress and Sun in My Bones in 2021. In 2022 she was awarded the Carla Zampatti Arts and Culture Medal from Multicultural NSW for the Entanglement program. In 2022-23 Entanglement was shown around the world in film festivals, including at The United Nations Womens Conference in Rwanda. Lliane has directed live shows Amplify in Wagga, Dubbo and Goulburn in 2022 and Embellishment at Wagga Gallery, Studio 138 Dubbo and at KXT Broadway in Sydney in 2023.
Catherine Enane
Catherine Enane is a Kenyan allround performer, theatre maker and director. She is professionally trained and a graduate of The Theatre Company of Kenya with over eleven years of experience in the performing arts. Catherine has featured in several theatre performances across the country and internationally (with good connections and an affinity for North Western Europe), furthermore she has performed and directed several theatrical performance. She has extensive experience managing theatre, coordinating social development projects and community engagement through arts.Currently, she is a conservation education and engagement specialist and Theatre Director for The Elephant Queen Outreach Program in Kenya.
Elizabeth Jigalin
Elizabeth Jigalin is a composer, performer, teaching artist and creative producer based in Sydney/Eora on Gadigal land. Elizabeth’s music has been premiered at festivals around the world including Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Extended Play, Darmstadt, BIFEM, Rouse Hills Psychedelia, Percussive Arts Society International Convention, Women of Noise and Australia’s Silent Film Festival. At present, she is Composer-in-Residence for Voices of Women and Moorambilla Voices. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Sydney Youth Orchestras, Bundanon Trust, Campbelltown Arts Centre and Bondi Pavillion. Previously, her music and ideas have been brought to life by a variety of performers and commissioners including Biennale of Sydney, Inner West Voices, Vanessa Tomlinson, Will Hansen, Jane Aubourg, Ensemble Offspring, Soundstream, Screen Dive, Lost in Books and FBI’s All the Best. She is the recipient of several awards including 2023 APRA/AMCOS Art Music Fund, Ars Musica Australis Scholarship, AAO Mentorship, 1st Prize Centenary of Canberra Composition Competition and 1st Prize Unbound Flute Festival competition. Elizabeth is the founder of creative music collective the music box project who were awarded Excellence for Experimental Music at the 2020 APRA AMCOS/AMC Art Music Awards.
Keeley Karsten
Keeley Karsten can be seen starring as Natalie Fabelman in Steven Spielberg’s highly acclaimed film The Fabelmans, co-written by Tony Kushner. Karsten recently completed production on the new Apple+ Limited TV Series The Savant. Other titles include the feature film Adult Best Friends which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival (2024), the film Entanglement, as well as the short films Pretty Doesn’t Hurt and On Being Twelve, for which she received the accolades of Best Young Actress at the Snow Leopard International Film Festival and Best Child Actress at the Sydney Indie Short Festival. Her other television credits include Amazon’s Hunters and a starring role as the young Pam Sinclair in the documentary series Evil Lives Here.. Recent stage credits include the World Premiere play, Summer Session with The Bones Brigade (Loralai) and the musical Fun Home (Small Alison) at Coachella Valley Repertory Theatre.
Gayle Kennedy
Gayle is a member of the Wongaiibon clan of S/W NSW. She was Indigenous Issues Editor/Writer for Streetwize Comics from 1995-1998. Gayle won the Queensland Premier’s David Unaipon Award in 2006 with her book ‘Me, Antman & Fleabag’. It was subsequently shortlisted for a Deadly Award, a Victorian Premier’s Award and highly commended in the Kate Challis RAAKA award. Gayle has published 12 books, has short stories and poems in anthologies by publishers such as Penguin, Currency Press, Black Inc, Magabala Books, Phoenix International and the Edinburgh Review, Australian Author. She has written children plays, a radio play and is dabbling in film and television scripts. She speaks both nationally and internationally on Disability Issues and writing. She teaches writing to kids, lectures on advocacy, access and equity, appeared on Compass, The Drum and in the film Slim and I. Her graphic novel ‘This Is Country’ OUP, was selected to represent Australia at the 2014 Bologna Book Fair, Italy.
Pooya Mohseni
Pooya Mohseni is a multi award-winning Iranian American actor, writer, filmmaker and transgender activist. Her stage credits include an obie win in the Pulitzer and Obie winning play English (Atlantic Theater Company + The Old Globe Theater), the world premiere of The Sex Party (Menier Chocolate Factory) in London, Hamlet (Play On Shakespeare Festival), She,He,Me (National Queer Theater), Our Town (Pride Plays), Galatea (The WP Project), The Good Muslim (EST), White Snake (Baltimore Center Stage), and the Audible production of Chonburi Hotel & The Butterfly Club (Williamstown Theater Festival). Her film and television credits include Law & Order: SVU, Big Dogs, Falling Water, Madam Secretary, Terrifier and See You Then. She is repped by Headline Talent Agency and TGTalent.
Alison Muir
Alison writes and performs comedy and film scripts and was a volunteer co-presenter and co-producer on 2SER-FM on arts program Entertainment Magazine for five years and in 1992 created the program Final Draft (about writing – all kinds), which is still running on 2SER today. She is also an effective and successful professional fundraiser whose strategies and initiatives have raised $60M through major gifts, bequests, grants, for not-for-profit and charitable organisations in the higher education, health, arts and social justice sectors. Her expertise includes designing customised fundraising strategies, building and strengthening donor relations, campaign design, appeals, special events, communications and media including writing and filmmaking.
Erin Quill
Erin Quill is a Broadway performer and was in the original cast of Avenue Q. She is a writer, and of mixed race Chinese descent. She is a 5th Generation Australian who resides in the USA and takes pride in her dual Chinese Australian citizenship.
Kaye Tuckerman
Kaye Tuckerman is an actor, director and educator. Originally from Sydney, Australia, Kaye is based in New York City, and continues to work throughout the USA, Canada, London, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, South Africa, and Kenya. Kaye was the Creative Producer/Director of The Australian Dance Awards for numerous years, Creative Director for Inglot NYC directing and designing multiple photo shoots, and fashion events, Casting Associate for Disney’s The Lion King (Australia), and Casting Director for Sydney Dance Company. She has directed multiple theater productions throughout Australia and Asia, and most recently has directed the short films: ‘Fragile’, ‘Black Canvas’, ‘Permission’, ‘Still Here’, ‘Trumped’, ‘Nana’s Room’, ‘Coping’, ‘The Last Queen’, ‘Soul Shaman’, ‘Choice’, ‘Famousland’, ‘On my Shoulder’, ‘JOE’, ‘Nil by Mouth’. Kaye co directed and co produced Entanglement and directed the shorts Trap Musik, On Being Twelve, Now You See Me, Fully Present, Body and Breath, Queen Bessie’s Gal, Isolation in Lockdown. She is a graduate of Australia’s two most prestigious arts institutions: WAAPA – Bachelor of Arts Music Theatre and NIDA – Post Graduate Diploma Directing.
Otgadahe Whitman-Fox
Otgadahe Whitman-Fox is Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara from The Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota and advocates to tell the real storylines for Natives in the film industry. Otgadahe is an actor, director and board member at The New Mexico Women in Film. Otgadahe works in front of and behind the camera as an actress and producer. She has worked with many film festivals in New Mexico and has accompanied The Women in Film & Television International to the Cannes Film Festival in 2018 & 2019. She wrote and performed We Are Still Here in the film Entanglement and appeared in the feature Dead for a Dollar.