Heroines Festival Day
Sun 15 Nov 2020 2:30 PM - 5:00 PM AEDT
Coledale Community Hall, 2515
Description
Join us for the Heroines Festival Day!
Heroines Festival is the only festival of women's writing about women. Festival Day on Sunday 15th November features -
Journalist Caroline Baum in conversation with Jacqueline Kent about her biography of women's right campaigner Vida Goldstien, Vida.
Heroines Festival Director, Dr. Sarah Nicholson speaking with author Bem Le Hunte about Elephants with Headlights.
Festival day also features the announcement of the winner of our first Heroines Writing Award, the launch of our third volume of Heroines: Anthology of Short Fiction and Poetry, and readings from some of the shortlisted writers; including Dasha Maiorova, KJ Mair, Isabella Luna & Medusa's Daughters (Adara Enthaler, Zoe Ridgway, Jamilla Dempsey & Isabella Luna).
We’re excited to see you all by the sea in Coledale to congratulate and celebrate these brilliant women writers!

Festival Day Guests
Jacqueline Kent was born in Sydney and grew up there and in Adelaide. Originally trained as a journalist and broadcaster, she has also been a book editor and a reviewer for numerous publications, and has a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Technology, Sydney. As well as biography and general social history, she has written fiction for young adults. A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life won the 2002 National Biography Award and the Nita B. Kibble Award. An Exacting Heart: The Story of Hephzibah Menuhin won the 2009 Nita B. Kibble Award. Beyond Words, A Year with Kenneth Cook was published to acclaim in 2019.
Sarah Nicholson is the creative director of The Heroines Festival and editor of the Heroines Anthology. Also the Director of the South Coast Writers Centre, she previously worked as an academic in the field of creative arts, religion, philosophy and literature. She has been a director of the National Young Writers’ Festival, an awardee of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust for Literature, and a recipient of a Writer’s and Translator’s Centre of Rhodes fellowship. She was the 2017 Emerging Writer in Residence for the Katherine Susannah Pritchard Writers’ Centre. She is the author of The Evolutionary Journey of Woman and an editor of Integral Voices on Sex, Gender and Sexuality.
Dasha Maiorova is a Belarus-born writer who lives and works on Dharawal Country in Sydney’s south. Her writing has been published in The Big Issue, Voiceworks and Baby Teeth. She is currently working on her first manuscript, a contemporary literary gothic set in Saint Petersburg, which was long-listed for the Richell Prize. She writes about books and reading at www.dashamaiorova.com She has recently fallen in love with aerial lyra, and dreams of combining this physical art form with writing and painting.
Isabella Luna is a queer writer and performing artist living and working on Dharawal, Wodi Wodi, and Eora lands in NSW, Australia. She holds a BCA (Hons) in Writing at the University of Wollongong. Her work has been featured in various publications and festivals, including: Cordite Poetry Review; the Wollongong Writers Festival; Baby Teeth Journal; Sydney’s Story-Fest; and once in Texas via Skype. Find her on Twitter: @bellalunapoe
Adara Enthaler, Jamilla Dempsey, Isabella Luna & Zoe Ridgway - Four female-identifying artists met at a poetry slam in Wollongong. Moved by each other's unique voices and united in their love of words, they created Medusa’s Daughter: a place to share their furies and vulnerabilities through performance. A study in riot and rhythm, joy and sorrow, rage, power, hope and forgiveness, Medusa’s Daughter aspires to strike dissonant harmonies that explore the multifaceted nature of womanhood. They can’t promise their words won’t encourage revolution, but they can promise not to turn anyone into stone.
KJ Mair is currently an emerging writer. She has studied screenwriting at the Australian, Film Television & Radio School (AFTRS) for two years. She has won second prize in both the Alice Sinclair Memorial Prize (2016) and the Newcastle Herald Short Story completion (2019). She has also been a finalist in numerous writing competitions, has had stories published in the Newcastle Herald and the Hunter Professional Arts Magazine and has been shortlisted for the Drowned Earth (2019) anthology. In 2020 she was an editor and contributor to her writer’s group (Lake Macquarie Branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers) anthology, Beneath the Surface.

Vida Goldstein was an advocate for women's rights, a campaigner for peace, fought for the distribution of wealth, and a trail-blazer who provided leadership and inspiration to innumerable people. Blazing her trail at the dawn of the twentieth century, Vida Goldstein remains Australia’s most celebrated crusader for the rights of women. Her life – as a campaigner for the suffrage in Australia, Britain and America, an advocate for peace, a fighter for social equality and a shrewd political commentator – marks her as one of Australia’s foremost women of courage and principle.
Vida first came to national prominence as the first woman in the Western world to stand for a national Parliament, in Victoria, for the Senate, in 1903. As a fighter for equal rights for women, and as a champion of social justice, she quickly established a pattern of working quietly against men’s control of Australian society. Her work for the peace movement and against conscription during the heightened emotions of the First World War showed her determination to defy governments in the name of fairness and equity. Vida came to adulthood when Australia was in the process of inventing itself as a new nation, one in which women might have opportunities equal to those of men. Her work for her own sex, especially her battles for equality in politics, illuminated issues that persist to this day.
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This will be a Covid Safe event. Capacity is limited. Please remember to practice social distancing on the day, and do not attend if you are feeling unwell.
SCHEDULE
2:15 Doors Open
2:30 Welcome
2:40 Readings from Heroines Anthology vol.3
- K.J Mair
- Isabella Luna
- Dasha Maiorova
- Medusa's Daughters: Adara Enthaler, Jamilla Dempsey, Isabella Luna & Zoe Ridgway
3:20 Announcement of the Heroines Women's Writing Prize
3:40 Caroline Baum & Jacqueline Kent
4:30 Bem Le Hunte & Sarah Nicholson
Thanks to our sponsor & bookseller

Location
Coledale Community Hall, 2515