DIRECTOR - SARAH NICHOLSON

Founder of The Neo-Perennial Press and Director of Heroines Festival, Sarah has an academic background in teaching literature, philosophy, creative arts, gender and religious studies. She is a past director of the National Young Writers’ Festival, an awardee of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust for Literature, a recipient of a Writer’s and Translator’s Centre of Rhodes fellowship, and the 2017 Emerging Writer in Residence for the Katherine Susannah Pritchard Writers’ Centre. 

COMMITEE OF MANAGEMENT

Chair: Peter Frankis 

Peter has worked at a senior level in the Commonwealth and NSW public service for nearly thirty years. He has masters qualifications in public sector management and international relations. He has published two collections of short stories. After retiring to the Illawarra, Peter has continued to write and his poetry has been published in various print and on-line journals and his first book of poetry Shorely was published by Ginninderra Press.  

Deputy Chair: Samson Soulsby

Samson is the Program Coordinator at Merrigong Theatre Company and an English Literature PhD candidate. He has worked professionally as a conference organiser for specialised events in governance and law, and has several years of experience teaching primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of English literature and creative writing at University of Wollongong. He is an active member of local arts and community spaces. 

Treasurer: Nicholas Sheppard

Nicholas currently holds a fractional appointment as Senior Lecturer of Practice in Computing at Western Sydney University. He was previously an Assistant Professor at the Singapore Institute of Technology, and before that a Sessional Lecturer at Victoria University Sydney. Over various roles in various institutions he has taught programming, mathematics, software design and software performance.

Secretary: Vacant

Pat Simmons

Pat has spent many years working in children’s services at long day care centres, museum settings and TAFE teaching, and is now a full-time writer of children’s poetry, short stories and flash fiction. She has a particular interest in connecting children with the natural world and thus often includes insects and arachnids in her work with kids – she lives with a menagerie of critters in Scarborough.

Dr (Hon) Aunty Barbara Nicholson

Elder of the Wadi Wadi people, Poet, Honorary Fellow at the Law Faculty, UOW. Aunty Barbara has a Degree in English Literature, Phd UOW (law), Lecturer UOW and UNSW, Initiator and Project Leader of the Ngana Bangarai Project, former president of of Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, nominated for Social Justice medal, mentor and advisor to students, former member UOW’s Human Research Ethics Committee, former executive member Link-Up NSW Aboriginal Corporation. 

Genevieve Quirk

Genevieve has a Bsc University of Queensland, DULF University of Paris, MEnvLaw Australian National University is a PhD candidate at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security. Genevieve worked internationally as a policy advisor on issues related to the law of the sea including in the EU and at the UN. Genevieve has worked for international NGOs, UNESCO, Ericsson and curated community marine conservation exhibitions. She is passionate about the power of the written word and the contribution of the SCWC to the writers of the region. 

Jodi Lamanna

Jodi Lamanna is a writer and researcher, living and working on unceded Dharawal Country. Jodi’s works include Arriving Late: The Lived Experience of Women Receiving a Late Autism Diagnosis, a co-written chapter in a book about Career Development Learning and Sustainability Goals: Consideration for Research and Practice, and various academic papers. Jodi has also won an award for a children’s story, Voices from the Intersection (Allen & Unwin).

Nicole Smede

Nicole Smede is a poet, musician, multi-disciplinary artist, and Arts educator of Warrimay/Birribay and colonial descent, living and creating on Wodi Wodi Dharawal Country. Her poetry can be found in the Australian Poetry Journal; Mascara Literary Review; Never Heard of Them (2019); Guwayu: for all times (2020); What we Carry, (2021); and 20x20x12: Sensing Place (2021).