2024 Special Guests
Joseph Abboud
Chef Joseph Abboud has been cooking his take on modern Middle Eastern food at Rumi - the restaurant he owns with his wife, Nat Abboud – in Melbourne's Brunswick, since 2006. In late 2023, Joseph and Nat moved the much-loved restaurant up the road to Brunswick East, opening a neighbouring bar, Rocket Society, at the same time. The two venues now keep the inner-north, and beyond, sated with Abboud classics; Sigara BöreğI (cheese cigars filled with haloumi, feta and kasseri); Persian meatballs cooked in tomato and saffron with labne and advieh-marinated lamb shoulder, with Sals and mint sirkanjabin. Rocket Society has garnered its own solid following with Middle Eastern-inspired mezze and snacks such as hummus with red butter chickpeas; fried cauliflower leaves, tahini, sumac, chilli and BBQ’d Lamb and sweetbread skewer with carob molasses taking the locals by storm. These new venues coincided with the publication of Joseph’s first cookbook, Rumi: Food of Middle Eastern Appearance (Murdoch Books), a book filled with pages of generosity, cheekiness, practicality and a deep love for good food and connection. Joseph was trained classically in leading French kitchens but his love of community has seen him author a book to bring everyone to the table. Salads, fish, veg, meat and toum (with almost everything) share each page with honest tales of family and cheffing and a warm insightful touch that only a chef with Abboud’s experience can carry.
Brigid Magner
Brigid Magner is Associate Professor in Literary Studies and Co-Director of the non/fictionLab at RMIT University. She has family links to Manangatang and has been fascinated by the Mallee ever since she first visited it. Most of her research is about the relationship between literature and place. Her book Locating Australian Literary Memory was published in 2020.
Melinda Hinkson
Melinda Hinkson is an independent writer and social researcher with wide ranging interests in people-place relationships. As an anthropologist she has worked extensively with Warlpiri people of the Central Desert and since 2022 with farmers and fruit growers of the Millewa-Mallee region of north-western Victoria. She is author of See How We Roll: Enduring Exile Between Desert and Urban Australia (Duke University Press, 2021) and Remembering the Future: Warlpiri Life Through the Prism of Drawing (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2025). She has edited books on the life work of anthropologist WEH Stanner, the Northern Territory Intervention, and identity in the digital age. For two decades Melinda taught and researched anthropology and visual culture at the Australian National University (2001-15) and Deakin University (2015-22). From 2014 to 2020 she was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. She directed the Institute of Postcolonial Studies between 2019 and 2023. Melinda is currently an adjunct associate professor with the Climate Change Adaptation Lab, La Trobe University, and lives on a farm in the Millewa. 
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Dr Lilian Pearce
Dr Lilian Pearce is a lecturer in environmental humanities at La Trobe University’s Centre for the Study of the Inland. She holds a Bachelor of Science with honours (UTAS) and a PhD in environmental history (ANU). Her interdisciplinary place-based research focuses on issues of social and environmental justice and how environmental management practices do political work. Her writing appears in academic journals in the fields of history, geography and environmental management. She is published in Aeon, The Griffith Review and The Conversation, and sits on the Editorial Advisory Board of Humans and Nature Press.
Emily Potter
Emily Potter is Professor of Literary Studies in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. Her research concerns the intersection of place-making and storytelling in Australian regions. Emily co-leads the ‘Reading in the Mallee’ research team with Brigid Magner, exploring the literary history of the Mallee through participatory, community-based methods. Her most recent book is Writing Belonging at the Millennium: Notes from the Field of Settler Colonial Place.
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Nikita Vanderbyl 
Nikita Vanderbyl is a researcher of art and colonialism and a recent local to Sunraysia. Her research has focused on the paintings and drawings of Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung artist William Barak as well as the legacies of British slavery and its connections to colonisation of South Australia. Her writing has been published on the Conversation, in the La Trobe Journal, Aboriginal History, History Workshop Journal and Australian Historical Studies. When she isn’t researching Australia’s past, Nikita explores Paarkantji Country and local history on her doorstep in Wentworth. She also writes an irregular newsletter of art criticism and reviews called Slow Looking: 
https://nikitavanderbyl.substack.com/.
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Angela Savage 
Angela Savage is an award-winning writer and CEO of Public Libraries Victoria. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing, giving her the Bond villain-like name of Doctor Savage. Her latest novel is Mother of Pearl. Angela Savage is an award-winning writer, former CEO of Writers Victoria, and current CEO of Public Libraries Victoria. Her debut novel, Behind the Night Bazaar, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Unpublished Manuscript, and all three of her Jayne Keeney PI novels were shortlisted for Ned Kelly Awards. Angela’s short stories have been published in Australia and the UK and she won the 2011 Scarlet Stiletto Award for short crime fiction. Angela holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Monash University. Her latest novel is Mother of Pearl.
Terri-Ann White
Terri-Ann Whites working life has been arranged around books and ideas, as a practitioner and an advocate. Terri-Ann operated an independent bookshop for 14 years and has taught literature and writing in three universities. As Director and Publisher, UWA Publishing (2006-2020), she has published around 450 books. 
Terri-Ann remains actively involved in the publishing sphere: She launched a new imprint in 2021, Upswell Publishing, with a particular interest in hybrid forms of writing.
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Farhan Shah and Sufi Oz
in concert at the Mildura Arts Centre
​Farhan Shah 
Farhan Shah is an award-winning renowned singer, composer and music producer. who has performed across the world and also composed music for film, television,
and other popular artists in Karachi as well as in Adelaide. Since arriving in Adelaide in 2016 he has toured for overseas  performances, created traditional and fusion Sufi musical groups, performed at major Australian music festivals, developed award winning recording productions and received the Adelaide UNESCO City of Music award for best international music collaboration as well as Global Music Awards for outstanding achievement in sufi & eastern contemporary music. Dubbed the “Pakistani Pavarotti” in Adelaide Advertiser for his phenomenal voice, Shah has played a major role in facilitating cultural understanding between East and West, introducing audiences to the immense beauty and power of Sufi music, tradition and culture. SufiOz is Farhan’s contemporary Sufi performance group presenting contemporary (ancient/modern) Sufi music mainly Ghazals and Qawwalis featuring classics of the master singers as well as original compositions. The music
is a blend of traditional and modern musical instruments and styles merging Sufi music with world music sounds.
​The group has performed extensively for multicultural communities of Adelaide as well as Nexus Arts, Trinity Church, Private shows, Oz Asia (JLF) Nowruz Festival, Auburn Courthouse, Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, Convention Centre, sold out Adelaide Fringe Festival shows and many more music performances in SA.