All I Have is a Voice Poetry Salon

Kris Kneen is the award-winning author of fiction, poetry and non-fiction including An Uncertain Grace which was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. They have written and directed broadcast television documentaries and were the Copyright Agency Ltd Non-fiction Fellow in 2020. Fat Girl Dancing is their latest book.

Lee Young-ju made her literary debut in 2000 by winning the Munhakdongne New Writer’s Contest. She is the author of the poetry collections The 108th Man, Cold Candies, Let Us Leave No Record of Love, You Arrived in the Season of Perennial Summer, and Her Name Is the Same as Mine. The English translation of Cold Candies won the 2022 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. Lee is a visiting professor at Myongji University’s Department of Creative Writing. 

Bronwyn Lea is the author of four award-winning books of poems, most recently The Deep North: A Selection of Poems (New York, Braziller Press). She is poetry editor at Meanjin and Professor of Poetry at the University of Queensland.

Pascalle Burton is a Meanjin-based experimental poet and performer with an interest in conceptual art and cultural theory. She also plays in the band The Stress of Leisure. Her collection About the Author is Dead is available through Cordite Books. 

Janaka Malwatta was born in Kandy, the hill capital of Sri Lanka, grew up in London, and moved to Brisbane in 2010. He writes about his experiences as an immigrant in two continents. He also writes narrative poetry, often exploring Sri Lankan stories. He won the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize in 2021. His first collection, blackbirds don’t mate with starlings, is available from University Queensland Press. He has also been published in Cordite Poetry Review, Rabbit Poetry, Peril Magazine and on the ESPN Cricinfo.com blog The Cordon. He is one half of the poetry and tabla collective Dubla. Their CD A Beautiful Land is available from Bandcamp.

Stuart Barnes is the author of Like to the Lark (Upswell Publishing, 2023) and Glasshouses (UQP, 2016), which won the 2015 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize, was commended for the 2016 Anne Elder Award and shortlisted for the 2017 Mary Gilmore Award. His Sestina after B. Carlisle won the 2021/22 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. Stuart lives and writes on Darumbal country.

Katherena Vermette (she/her) is a Red River Métis (Michif) writer from Treaty 1 territory, the heart of the Métis nation—Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Her first book, North End Love Songs, won the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Her first novel, The Break, was a national bestseller and won several 2017 awards, including the Amazon First Novel Award, Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award, and McNally Robinson Book of the Year.

She lives with her family in a cranky old house within skipping distance of the temperamental Red River. The Strangers is her second novel.