Greetings, and welcome all to our new look e-news format 2021: as we reflect back on the year that was 2020 – we take a moment to remember those who are not with us today, those who battled through one of the most medically challenging crisis in our living memory.
In the upcoming First Nations COVID_19 Australian Poetry Journal 2021, FNAWN will be capturing frame by poetic frame how we as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers, poets, and storytellers responded to so such a global pandemic. Within that Journal there will be poems that leap out at you as though you were watching their thoughts in live-streaming. There are poems with added layers of complexities sifting through socio-economical battleships. Some poets have deployed warrior like parts of speech in their narrative. Others have demonstrated playful melodic tunes of thriving or surviving in isolation. All of which make for a grand poetic splash in 2021 for all lovers of poetry to consume. Watch this space!
As FNAWN now move into our first of our Four-Year-Funding Cycle (Australia Council for the Arts), we celebrate the coming together of a brand new year full of opportunities and nurturing creative development for our Members which we hope will inspire, deliver, and pollenate the unceded stories of our sovereign voices. 2021 also marks the Fourth FNAWN National Workshop – which is to be hosted in Australia’s Festival City, you guessed it – Adelaide. I cannot express how enthused and already out the gates our Board of Directors are in anticipated preparation for this National Workshop.
FNAWN Board of Directors: Speaking of Directors, I shall announce that Dr Jeanine Leane has stepped down from our Board (January), a difficult decision for Jeanine to have made, though necessary as 2021 will be Jeanine’s year to fulfill a number of her creative and academic writing and publishing commitments – we sincerely wish Jeanine all the best and hope to see her back on board in 2022.
Taking up the challenge of filling in Jeanine’s Skechers, is South Australian FNAWNee who really needs no introduction – but I will introduce him all the same: Filmmaker and writer Edoardo Crismani, a descendent of the Wiradjuri people. Edoardo was nominated for an Australian Writers Guild Award in 2017 for the documentary about his grandfather 1931 champion boxer and vaudeville entertainer Joe Murray. Joe Murray was known as the Black Panther in the ring. Edorado’s short stories and poetry have been published in journals and anthologies in Australia and overseas. He is the 2019-2021 Coordinator/Facilitator for South Australia First Nation Writers group. He is currently working on his first novel, a time travel story inspired by his grandfather’s life and times. Edoardo, welcome to FNAWN’s Board of Directors, we’ve already held our first Board Meeting for 2021, you graced us with your presence, you have now been well and truly inducted onto our Board of Directors. Thank you once again for accepting the interim role as one of our esteemed Directors.
New Members: Please make WELCOME our new FNAWNees: Nardi Simpson (NSW), Judi Morison (NSW), Celia Colin (SA), Laniyuk Garcon (SA), Travis Akbar (SA), Lystra Bisschop (QLD), Jannali Jones (NSW) and Maureen Jipiyililya Nampijinpa O’Keefe (NT). Welcome all to the First Nations Australia Writers Network – your national writer’s network.
Our FNAWN Membership is growing exponentially year by year, surpassing many state and territories in numbers of members. Let’s keep expanding, keep sharing our stories, and bring out the very best of our emerging, mid-career, and established writers in publishing, in audio-books, and digital-media.