Congratulations to Yuot A. Alaak, Kelly Canby, Jon Doust, Madelaine Dickie, Donna Mazza, Helen Milroy and Meg McKinlay, who are all one step closer to winning a Western Australian Premier’s Prize or Fellowship worth $15,000 and $60,000 respectively.

Hassan Al Nawwab was born in Iraq in 1960 and came to Australia in 2003 with his wife and children. He is a poet and journalist who has published three volumes of poetry and two plays in Arabic, and has received numerous awards for his poems.

Vociferate | 詠 is Western Australian writer Emily Sun’s debut poetry collection. Alice Pung has described the book as ‘polemical, personal and political’ – in it, Emily meditates upon a range of issues that have shaped her world. Emily was born in British colonial Hong Kong to stateless diasporic-Chinese parents, who are descendants of Chinese […]

Father of the Lost Boys author and former child soldier Yuot A. Alaak says lived experiences have a lot to teach us. He says giving students the opportunity to enter the lives of refugee children in a war, but from a safe distance, can help build empathy and understanding. In this very special blog post, […]

For Yuot A. Alaak, stories were a way of distracting himself from the fear of enemy attack, starvation and hardship, and to keep hope alive. In this episode, Yuot discusses his City of Fremantle Hungerford Award shortlisted memoir, Father of the Lost Boys, which tells the story of his family, especially his father, Mecak Ajang […]

Avan Judd Stallard’s novel Spinifex & Sunflowers goes behind the walls of an immigration detention centre in an honest, and at times harrowing, exploration of life as an asylum seeker in modern Australia.

Swimming on the Lawn by Yasmin Hamid follows the adventures of Farida, who lives with her family in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Sudanese culture and customs are brought to life, from the ubiquitous tea service and hearty breakfasts to the commemoration of Muslim holidays and the rites of birth and death.

Renee Schipp is the co-curator of of Thonglines – an art installation to be launched at Voicebox on Monday 4 July. In this interview she describes the ‘Thonglines’ project and her work with mainstream students and refugees on Christmas Island.