Growing Up African in Australia

Sat 7 Sep 2019

Maxine Beneba Clarke + Sara El Sayed

Auditorium 2, State Library of Queensland

Panel

7145

#Performances

#About the event

Duration: 60 minutes

Hear from authors in this new volume that tells the stories of the African diaspora in Australia with passion, power and poise.

#Artists

Maxine Beneba Clarke

Maxine Beneba Clarke is the ABIA and Indie award winning author of the critically acclaimed short fiction collection Foreign Soil, the bestselling memoir The Hate Race, the Victorian Premier's Award winning poetry collection Carrying the World, and the Boston Globe/Horn Prize winning picture book The Patchwork Bike, illustrated by Van T. Rudd. She is the author and illustrator of the children's books Fashionista, and When We Say Black Lives Matter, and the editor of Best Australian Stories 2017, and the anthology Growing Up African in Australia. Her latest poetry collection is How Decent Folk Behave.

Sara El Sayed

Sara El Sayed is a writer based in Meanjin (Brisbane). In 2020 she received a Queensland Writers Fellowship, and was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Young Publishers and Writers Award. Her debut memoir, Muddy People, is out now.

#Moderator

Kathomi Gatwiri

Dr. Kathomi Gatwiri is the author of “African Womanhood and Incontinent Bodies” and an award winning community educator, activist and lecturer from Kenya, currently residing in Australia. Dr. Gatwiri is a social worker and psychotherapist who holds a First Class Honours in Social Work from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa and a Master’s in Counselling and Psychotherapy from the Cairnmillar Institute in Melbourne.She has completed a PhD with an interdisciplinary thesis entitled 'African womanhood, Health, Sexuality & Incontinent Bodies. In 2017, Gatwiri was named Young Kenyan of the Year by the Kenya Association of South Australia for her achievements and service in the African community in Australia. She is a regular contributor in SBS, and in the conversation on topics of race, feminism and immigration.