The Bogong

Our Bogong is a celebration and sharing of crafted spoken word pieces. Grab a drink and hang around for a pizza afterwards. With Nardi Simpson, SJ Norman, Declan Fry, Tara June Winch, Victor Rodger (NZ), Emily Munro-Harrison, Nayook, Claire G. Coleman, Nayuka Gorrie.

Full Admission: $20

Mob/concession: $15

7.00pm—9.00pm @ Comedy Republic

Nardi Simpson (she/her) is a Yuwaalaraay storyteller from NSW’s north west freshwater plains. As a member of Indigenous duo Stiff Gins, Nardi has travelled nationally and internationally for the past 22 years. She is also a founding member of ‘Freshwater,’ an all-female vocal ensemble formed to revive the language and singing traditions of New South Wales river communities. Nardi is a graduate of Ngarra Burria First People’s Composers and is currently undertaking a PhD through ANU School of Music in Composition. Nardi is the current musical director of Barayagal, a cross cultural choir based at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and The Conservatorium’s and Ensemble Offspring’s First Nations artist in residence for 2021. Nardi’s debut novel ‘Song of the Crocodile’ was winner of the 2017 Black&Write! Fellowship, the 2021 ALS Gold Medal and 2021 QLD Literary Award Fiction Book of the Year. It was also longlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Awards. Nardi currently lives in Sydney and continues to be heavily involved in the teaching and sharing of culture in both her Sydney and Yuwaalaraay communities. www.nardisimpson.com

SJ Norman (they/them) is an artist, writer and curator. Their career has so far spanned seventeen years and has embraced a diversity of disciplines, including solo and ensemble performance, installation, sculpture, text, video and sound. Their work has been commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney, Performance Space New York, Venice International Performance Art Week, and the National Gallery of Australia, to name a few. They are the recipient of numerous awards for contemporary art, including a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship and an Australia Council Fellowship. Their writing has won or placed in numerous prizes, including the Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award, the Peter Blazey Award, the Judith Wright Prize and the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. Permafrost is their debut collection of short stories. In 2019, they established Knowledge of Wounds, a global gathering of queer First Nations artists, which they co-curate with Joseph M Pierce. They are currently based between Sydney and New York.

​​Declan Fry (he/him) is a writer, essayist, and poet. Born on Wongatha country in Kalgoorlie, Declan Fry has written for the Guardian, Saturday Paper, Overland, Australian Book Review, Liminal, Sydney Review of Books, Cordite, Kill Your Darlings, Westerly and elsewhere. His Meanjin essay “Justice for Elijah or a Spiritual Dialogue with Ziggy Ramo, Dancing” received the 2021 Peter Blazey Fellowship. He has been shortlisted for the Judith Wright Poetry Prize and lives on unceded Wurundjeri country with his partner and their cat, Turnip.

Tara June Winch is a Wiradjuri writer based in France. Her first novel Swallow the Air, (UQP) 2006 was critically acclaimed. In 2008, she was mentored by Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. The novel featured on the HSC syllabus for Standard and Advanced English from 2009 – 2019 and a tenth-anniversary edition was published in 2016. The short-story collection After the Carnage (UQP) was published in 2016 also to critical acclaim. In 2018 she wrote the script for the Indigenous dance documentary Carriberrie. Her latest novel The Yield, (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin) was published in 2019 and won the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award and Prime Minister’s Literary Award. The Yield is published in the US/CA/UK (HarperVia, HarperCollins), and translated into French, Dutch, and forthcoming in Mandarin, German, and Polish. www.tarajunewinch.com

Victor Rodger (he/him) is an award-winning writer and producer of Samoan (Iva) and Scottish (Dundee) descent. His plays include the internationally acclaimed BLACK FAGGOT and MY NAME IS GARY COOPER while his television work includes the Kiwi soap opera SHORTLAND STREET, the Maori Television drama THIS IS PIKI, the Pasifika comedy show SIS and the contemporary Pasifika horror anthology series TEINE SA: THE ANCIENT ONES. His works of fiction and non-fiction have been published in Landfall, E-Tangata and Metro as well as in the Maori/Pasifika anthology BLACK MARKS ON THE WHITE PAGE, co-edited by Witi Ihimaera. Through his theatre entity, FCC, he produced Tusiata Avia’s WILD DOGS UNDER MY SKIRT, which played Off-Broadway last year. He leads the Maori and Pasifika creative writing workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University and is attached to various projects in theatre, film and television. This year he was named an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to theatre and Pacific Arts.

Emily (she/her) is a Wiradjuri woman, who lives on unceded Kulin Country in Narrm. As a writer, researcher Emily sees strength, resilience and fight as important in resisting and reframing colonial narratives, and for the continuation of vibrant and beautiful First Nations cultures. Emily’s work engages in the meaning behind what people say, and the ways history and environments shape our experiences, connections and stories of place. Emily likes to encourage her audience to think about their relationships with different places and histories – what we bring, and how we each have an opportunity and responsibility to influence and make change. Emily has previously participated in Collective Spirit: First Nation Poetry Residency, the Emerging Writers Festival, and Yirramboi. She has published poetry and academic writing and stories. Some other stuff she does when she isn’t writing includes: trying to finish a PhD, working as a researcher on topics relating to youth justice, resistance, and connections between health and wellbeing and place, and being a mum.

Nayook (she/they) is an intermittently practicing storyteller and human question mark.

Claire G. Coleman (she/her) is a Noongar woman whose family have belonged to the south coast of Western Australia since long before history started being recorded. She writes fiction, essays, poetry and art writing while either living in Naarm (Melbourne) or on the road. During an extended circuit of the continent she wrote a novel, Terra Nullius, which won the black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship and was listed for 8 awards including a shortlisting for The Stella Prize. clairegcoleman.com

Nayuka Gorrie is a Gunai/Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta writer. Nayuka’s work explores Black, queer and feminist politics as well as Black, queer, and Blerd (Blak+nerd) culture. Nayuka’s television writing includes Get Krack!n, co-writing and performing in Black Comedy, and the five-part children’s series Thalu.