DECOLONISING IN A COLONY
Exploring the parameters of decolonising narratives
Saturday 6 November 2021
01:00 pm - 02:00 pm
This panel seeks to explore whether this concept of decolonising narratives is rooted in the colonial experience only and how geographies affect such narratives. What is it in the emotional, historical and social sense? Are there tensions in the contemporary first-world queer experience and decolonising the predominantly white narrative?
Moderator - Hayden Moon is an out and proud 26 year old Queer, legally blind, transmasculine person. He is a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, a Pinnacle Foundation Scholar and a competitive Irish dancer. In any spare time he can find, he advocates for the LGBTQIA+, disabled and First Nations communities through his roles in various activist collectives. He also consults with LGBTQIA+ organisations such as ACON and The LGBTI Health Alliance. In 2020, Hayden was awarded the Out For The Next Generation – Student of the Year award in Out For Australia’s 30 Under 30 Awards.
Ellen van Neerven (they/them) is an award-winning author, editor and educator of Mununjali (Yugambeh language group) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, and non-fiction on unceded Turrbal and Yuggera land. van Neerven’s first book, Heat and Light (UQP, 2014), a novel-in-stories, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. van Neerven’s poetry collection Comfort Food (UQP, 2016) won the Tina Kane Emergent Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize. Throat (UQP, 2020), the recipient of Book of the Year, the Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Multicultural Award at 2021 NSW Literary Awards and the inaugural Quentin Bryce Award, is now available. They are the editor of three collections, including the recent Homeland Calling: Words from a New Generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voices and are co-editing an upcoming collection of Blak + Black Visionary and Speculative fiction Unlimited Futures with Sudanese multilingual writer Rafeif Ismail.
Priyanka Bromhead is an eela thamizh antidisciplinary artist, writer and recovering teacher who lives and works on unceded Darug land. The daughter of refugees who fled state sponsored genocide from the island known as Sri Lanka, she has worked with young people in South West and Western Sydney for 15 years presenting antiracist and anticolonial perspectives. Priyanka's own writing chronicles the intersections of her identity, as well as her observations of Western Sydney life through poetry, prose and creative non-fiction. She is inspired by the works of Oodgeroo Noonucal, Toni Morrison, Lauryn Hill and Mathangi Arulpragasam. Her first anthology mozhi (Girls on Key, 2021) is a meditation on the tensions of being colonised and displaced while being complicit in First Nations' displacement. She is the founder of we are the mainstream, a grassroots collective for and by First Nations, gender diverse and women of colour, and is currently working on learning to practise self-compassion, how to rest and has been enjoying pottering in her emerging veggie patch.
James Elazzi’s writing has been described as humorous, touching and dramatic, leaving you thinking long after. James’ latest work, SON OF BYBLOS, (BNW/Belvoir 25A) will be staged in July. LADY TABOULI has been shortlisted in the 2021 Nick Enright Award for Playwriting. James was selected to be part of the 2019-21 Sydney Theatre Company Emerging Writers’ Program. QUEEN FATIMA (National Theatre of Parramatta/ 2021 Sydney Festival) enjoyed a sold-out season. James was named one of AMP's 2021 Tomorrow Maker's in Excellence to Screen/Stage Writing and awarded a grant to write a new script. In 2020, LADY TABOULI (National Theatre of Parramatta/ 2020 Sydney Festival) enjoyed a sold-out season. SON OF BYBLOS was a finalist in the 2020 Silver Gull Play Award. James’ first stage production, OMAR AND DAWN (King Cross Theatre 2019/Green Door/Apocalypse) enjoyed a sold-out season. James’ writing has been included in numerous festivals and events, including, NToP Page to Stage/Creative Futures, KXT Story Tellers’s Festival and the Sydney Writer’s Festival.