We’re delighted to announce the successful applicants to our new mentoring program for emerging curators of writing events from culturally diverse backgrounds. The successful applicants are Zohra Aly, Annie Brockenhuus-Schack and Tina Huang. They will be joined by Djungan woman, editor, and creative producer, Phoebe Grainer.
The emerging curators will program sessions for the 2021 Boundless Festival under the guidance of Sisonke Msimang, curator of the literature and ideas program at Perth Festival. The Boundless Festival was established by Writing NSW in 2017 to provide a platform for Indigenous and culturally diverse writers.
The program is one of three initiatives designed to increase cultural diversity in writing and publishing offered by Writing NSW with funding from Create NSW. The other two initiatives will support a mentoring program for emerging writers, as well as a program of paid internships in publishing houses. Find out more about the diversity initiatives here.
Zohra Aly trained and practised as a pharmacist for several years before finally turning to writing, her first love. She has freelanced, writing for titles such as Sydney Morning Herald, Sunday Life and MiNDFOOD magazine. She has recently completed a Masters in Creative Writing at UTS. Her short fiction and essays have been published in the Sydney Review of Books, the UTS Writers’ Anthology 2020 Empty Sky and Second City, a Sydney Review of Books anthology published in May this year.
Tina Huang is a Chinese Australian writer and performer based in Sydney. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Lifted Brow, Cordite Poetry Review, Overland, and Going Down Swinging (forthcoming). In 2020, she was a NSW state finalist in the Australian Poetry Slam and in 2021 her poetry performance piece ‘c’est la guerre’ was commissioned by Diversity Arts Australia. She tweets @tennis_jock.
Annie Brockenhuus-Schack is an emerging curator, producer and writer based in Western Sydney. She holds a Masters in Curating and Cultural Leadership and her practice includes exploring the Filipinx value of kapwa (shared being) and its influence in curatorial methodologies, process-based curating, and care within collaborative practices. Annie is a participant for Sport for Jove’s Producer Mentorship and Diversity Arts Australia’s StoryCasters program. She currently works for Sydney Theatre Company and Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (CAAP), and previously worked at Biennale of Sydney. She is the co-founder of theatre production company Ka-llective and is currently developing a new theatrical work Salt Baby, with PACT and Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre supported by AusCo and Create NSW.
Phoebe Grainer is a Djungan woman from Far North Queensland. She is a creative producer at Sweatshop Literacy Movement and co-editor of Racism: Stories on Hate, Fear and Prejudice (Sweatshop, 2021). Phoebe has performed in Saltbush (2017), Two Hearts (2018), Serpent’s Teeth (2018), Doing (2019) and Rainbow’s End (2019). Her essays, poems and short stories have appeared in The Lifted Brow, SBS Voices, Red Room Poetry and Sweatshop Women. In 2020, Phoebe was awarded a fellowship with Griffen Theatre Studio. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 2016.