In Conversations with Mentors and Mentees
Over the past three months, the SCWC Emerging Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Writers Mentoring Program, which partnered emerging Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander writers with established writers to provide practical support for them to develop their individual writing projects, has been quietly underway.
Tabatha Cann was mentored by Rowena Lennox, editor, academic and author of Fighting Spirit of East Timor and Dingo Bold, as well as of poetry, essays, memoir and short fiction. Sharyn McDonogh was mentored by Dr Bambi Ward, educator in Indigenous Health and PhD in Creative Writing.
Program Leader Judi Morison recently interviewed the mentors and mentees online to hear about their experiences of working together, and to hear some live readings of the work they’ve produced during their mentorship. Watch those In Conversations through the videos below, and scroll down to learn more about each of the writers.
Emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Writers Mentoring Program Leader Judi Morison hosts mentor Dr Bambi Ward and mentee Sharyn McDonogh in a discussion about the program, and Sharyn shares a reading of the work she developed during the program.
Emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Writers Mentoring Program Leader Judi Morison speaks with mentee Tabatha Cann and mentor Rowena Lennox about their experience, and Tabatha reads from the writing she developed during the mentoring program.
Dr Rowena Lennox is the author of two books, Dingo Bold: the life and death of K’gari dingoes (2021) and Fighting Spirit of East Timor: the life of Martinho da Costa Lopes (2000), which won a NSW Premier’s History Award. She has worked as a book editor for many years, and her award-winning essays and stories have been widely published.
As well as mentoring and teaching creative writing, Rowena is an adjunct at the Centre for Public History at the University of Technology Sydney and a 2021 Reading Australia ambassador.
Tabatha (Tab) Cann is a proud Aboriginal saltwater woman, and an equally proud Lesbian. She has worked in the NSW Public Service for over 20 years, primarily with her Aboriginal community, across different services.
Tab loves reading non-fiction, and has always wanted to share her stories and write a book. She also writes poetry and loves public speaking and walking. Being on country nurtures her soul, and she hopes to walk the Larapinta Trail and many other wonderful trails in Australia and world-wide. Tab is honoured that South Coast Writers Centre has given her an opportunity follow her dream and write.
Dr Bambi Rakhel Ward is an author and senior medical education consultant with a PhD in creative writing and a background in general practice and oral history. She wrote a memoir of her spiritual journey as part of her PhD, which focused on breaking the silence of identity based family secrets.
Bambi has a special interest in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and worked in partnership with Aboriginal Cultural Educators in the Northern Territory for many years.
She lives on the edge of the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri and the Bunurong people of the Kulin nation in Rowville, Victoria.
Sharyn McDonogh is a Yorta Yorta woman whose grandmother's mother was the daughter of William Cooper. Sharyn has been living on Yuin land since September 1992, raising her two sons. In 2013 she became the first Indigenous student to graduate with honors from the Batemans Bay campus of Wollongong University, and the first in her family.
Alongside her strong belief in the importance of truth telling in education and history has been her passion for self healing and the dormant power which resides in each and every human being on the planet.