Auburn Poets & Writers explore the theme of personal change in sketches, stories, images and poems. Enabling people to enrich their potential as they age is our society’s greatest challenge. Through humour, pathos, music and movement, Auburn Poets & Writers aim to show how we can step through the ‘mirrors’ of stereotype and everyday ‘knowns’ to liberation.
Presented with Auburn Poets & Writers.
David Falcon (Australian)
David’s work has been published in The Sydney Morning Herald and various anthologies and literary journals. He has performed his work at Varuna, the NSW Writers’ Centre, Poets Union venues, on radio station 2NBC and at Live Poets at Don Bank, North Sydney. His verse has also appeared in Red Room projects and Eureka Street magazine. David’s first book of poems Hidden in Plain View was published in 2021. This is David’s second Sydney Writers’ Festival with Auburn Poets & Writers.
Danny Gardner (Australian)
Danny is a freelance journalist, novelist, poet and editor. He is co-founder and has convened the venue Live Poets at Don Bank, North Sydney, since 2003. His latest book of poetry Figure in the Landscape was published by Ginninderra Press in 2022. Danny has appeared at Sydney Writers’ Festival with Auburn Poets & Writers (APW) since 2008. He became coordinator of the group in 2014 and co-engineered APW’s auspicing by the WestWord Centre for Writing in Parramatta who currently hosts APW’s monthly meetings and Sydney Writers’ Festival performances.
Halee Isil Cosar (Australian)
Halee is a Sydney-based teacher and poet. Her first volume of poetry Hijabi in Jeans was published by Guillotine Press in 2018. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies and journals including the Mascara Literary Review online. She likes working on projects where poetry meets other art forms. She has appeared in many Sydney Writers Festival events as part of Auburn Poets & Writers since 2007.
Michaela Simoni (Australian)
Michaela is a writer, artist and musician and has been performing with Auburn Poets & Writers (APW) since 2010. Her work has been included in the group’s anthologies Grandma’s Bed and Mosaic, and in the Zine West poetry, art and prose anthology. She has also illustrated a chidlren’s book. Michaela is also a member of Chester Hill Writing Group. Her art has been mounted in several group shows with Cumberland Arts Together (CAT). Her flute playing features in the group the Duck River Band as well as invigorating APW performance.
Luke Weyland (Australian)
Luke was born in Mosman, NSW and now lives and works in Auburn. He is married and has had six children. He chiefly writers poems about social justice and family. This is his first performance with Auburn Poets & Writers at the Sydney Writers’ Festival.
Trish Jean (Australian)
Trish explores the world using writing, photography and soundscape – language and representation images. Highlights of her creative pursuits have included meeting Jeanette Winterson at Sydney Writers’ Festival, founding and exhibiting with Sydney West Artistic Photographers and Cumberland Artists Together, and sharing her journey with Auburn Poets & Writers (APW) since 2019. Her endeavours to marry the creative and the real saw her successful in the 2022 Living Well photography competition ‘Resilience in a Kaleidoscopic’. Her writing has appeared in several anthologies. Her words about a cancer diagnosis and facing mortality in the 2022 Sydney Writers’ Festival production with APW Shadows and Reflections, which received positive feedback.
Yasemin Dolcel (Australian)
Yasemin has been part of Auburn Poets & Writers (APW) for the last nine years. With 30 years in the fashion industry, Yasemin was the pen dressing the fashion column for a local newspaper and the taste buds behind their restaurant reviews. Her poetry has appeared in APW’s anthologies: Grandma’s Bed and Mosaic and was an eruptive force in the group’s 2021 Sydney Writers’ Festival show: ‘How Distance Can Keep Us Together’ and in the 2019 performance ‘We Might As Well Be From Mars’.
Seher Aydinlik (Australian)
Seher is a writer and artist from Turkey. She is qualified in early childhood education, employing art as a way to enrich students’ creativity. She won a professional development award for her art in World Within and World Without. In Australia, she has had her poems published in a seminal Puncher + Wattman anthology To End All Wars, in Canberra Christian Writers and Live Poets at Don Ban anthologies, and APW collections Grandma’s Bed and Mosaic. In Turkey, she published eight poetry books and two CDs illustrating Turkish history through poems. Her art has been exhibited as part of Cumberland Artists Together (CAT). She has been part of the Auburn Poets & Writers performances at Sydney Writers’ Festival since 2016.
Mark Marusic (Australian)
Mark, from Sydney’s inner west, has self-published two books of his poetry: Mercurial Meanderings and Iconoclastic Journeys as well as co-editing two anthologies: A Square Circle and Poetsconsortium. Mark presents his poetry at a range of Sydney venues as well as co-convening Poets at the Petersham Bowling Club. Chief themes in Mark’s verse include the environment and home and our relationship to these. This is his second Sydney Writers’ Festival performance with Auburn Poets & Writers.
Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya (Australian)
Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya is a poet and prose writer. She was born in Crimea and moved to Australia in 2002. Tatiana has authored many publications and award-winning collections of short stories and essays in Russia. Her poetry and short stories in English have appeared in London Grip; Rochford Street Review; the Live Poets at Bon Bank Anthologies: Can I Tell You a Secret? and Presence; Not So Quiet; Skywriters; Across the Russian World; East-World Literary Forum; and Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. Tatiana is also a researcher and editor of the Russian literary journal Articulation and a Board Member of PEN, Moscow. She has appeared at the Sydney Writers’ Festival as part of Auburn Poets & Writers on numerous occasions.
Jai Thangavel (Australian)
Jayseelan Thangavel was born in Tirupatter, India and studied at the Madras Institure of Tech, Anna University. ‘Jai’ is the principal of Anjay Photography in Western Sydney. His work has produced images described as “arresting yet thoughtful” over many years. This is his second year in support of Auburn Poets & Writers at the Sydney Writers’ Festival.
