Sydney Writers' Festival

RUBY LANGFORD GINIBI (LOCAL)
Ruby Langford Gibini was born in 1934 in northern New South Wales. She has lived a remarkable and inspiring life and is a proud elder of the Bundjalung people.

Ruby’s first book of memoir, Don’t Take Your Love to Town, was originally published in 1988, and republished in 2007. It won the Australian Human Rights Award for Literature and the Pandora Books Women Writers’ Award in 1989. She has also published Real Deadly, My Bundjalung People and Haunted by the Past. Her fifth book, All My Mob, was published in 2007.

SAMUEL WAGAN WATSON (INTERSTATE)
Samuel Wagan Watson was born in Brisbane in 1972. Samuel is of Munanjali, Birri Gubba, German and Irish descent.

He was the winner of the 1999 David Unaipon award for emerging indigenous writers for his first collection of poetry, Of Muse, Meandering and Midnight. Since then he has written three more collections, Itinerant Blues, Hotel Bone and Smoke Encrypted Whispers which won the 2005 New South Wales Premier’s Book of the Year and the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize. Samuel’s writing has been translated into German, Norwegian and Indonesian.

Samuel’s opera die dunkle Erde (The Dark Earth) premiered in Brisbane in 2004 and again in 2005 for the Brisbane Music Festival. It is the story of a German vampire who gets a taste for Aboriginal Dreaming. His poetry has been adapted into animation and a short documentary by Brisbane fimmaker, Helen Kassila, entitled Bound in Bitumen.

He is currently working on the development of poetry for Brisbane City Council urban design, which incorporates text and architecture. In September 2007, he made his debut as a vocalist/performer alongside emerging indigenous folk-artist/musician Leah Flannagan at the Newcastle Emerging Young Writers Festival.

also appearing at...
46: Writers as Readers
108: Writers as Readers

ANITA HEISS (LOCAL)
Anita Heiss is a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central NSW and a writer, poet, activist, social commentator and academic. She is author of Dhuuluu-Yala: Publishing Aboriginal Literature, Not Meeting Mr Right and Who Am I?: The Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney 1937.

She won the 2004 NSW Premier's History Award (audio/visual) for Barani: the Aboriginal history of Sydney.

Anita has worked as the Communications Advisor for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Board of the Australia Council (2001-2003) and was the Deputy Director of Warawara Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University. She is National Coordinator of AustLit's Black Words subset.
www.anitaheiss.com

also appearing at...
67: Just Words: Australian Authors Writing for Justice
311: Gayle Kennedy in Conversation

PETER MINTER (LOCAL)
Peter Minter is a prize-winning poet, editor and reviewer. He is the author of several collections of poetry including blue grass, Empty Texas and Rhythm in a Dorsal Fin, was the editor of the Varuna New Poetry series, a founding editor of Cordite Poetry and Poetics Review and co-editor of Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets. From 2000 to 2005 he was poetry editor of Meanjin, and guest editor of two special issues.

He lectures in indigenous studies and poetics at The University of Sydney's Koori Centre.

www.peterminter.com

also appearing at...
147: The Earth That Sustains Us
300: Fight for Liberty and Freedom