The Emerging Writers’ Festival work, learn and play largely on the land of the Kulin nation, and pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.

EWF celebrates the history and creativity of the world’s oldest living culture.

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Performance & Partner

AFTER HOURS at the Convent

AFTER HOURS at the Convent is a curated encounter where ideas, conversations and creative exchange take centre stage.

For this special EWF edition, we celebrate the Convent’s Writers in Residence program through readings by Nalini Jacob-Roussety, Ernest Price and Mia-Francesca Jones, interwoven with digital works by Cat Yen and Mindy Gill, and music that threads its way through the evening.

As daylight fades, the Convent takes on a different rhythm. AFTER HOURS is an invitation to be part of it.

The Convent’s Writers in Residency program offers emerging and established writers the rare gift of time and space to immerse themselves in their work, think deeply, test ideas, and remain with them long enough for new directions and forms to emerge.

AFTER HOURS is presented and curated by Abbotsford Convent through the Writers Residency Program.
Generously supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.

    Presented in partnership with

Accessibility

Auslan Interpretation may be available on request, Wheelchair Accessible, Accessible Toilet.

Thursday 17 September, 6:30-8:30PM

$15 General
$5 First Nations Tickets

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Abbotsford Convent: Magdalen Laundry
1 St Heliers St, Abbotsford VIC 3067

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Featuring...

Mindy Gill

Mindy Gill is an award-winning poet, editor and critic, and recipient of the Queensland Premier’s Young Writers and Publishers Award. Mindy has received fellowships from the CMI Arts Initiative in Chennai and the Australian Poetry/NAHR Poetry Fellowship in the Val Taleggio, amongst others. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Australian Book Review, Griffith Review, and The Penguin Book of Indian Poets. She is Australian Book Review’s fifth Rising Star, and has written essays and criticism for Griffith Review, Sydney Review

Mia-Francesca Jones

Mia is a writer and researcher, and the recipient of the 2025 Mick Dark Flagship Fellowship for Outstanding Environmental Writing by Varuna National Writers’ House. Her writing has been highly commended for the Peter Blazey Fellowship for auto/biographical writing, and listed for the Desperate Literature Prize, the Rachel Funari Prize, the Overland VU Short Story Prize, and the Richell Prize by Hachette Australia.

Ernest Price

Ernest Price is transgender man living and writing on Bunurong land. His debut novel The Pyramid of Needs was published by Affirm Press in 2024. It is a dark, wry and deeply illuminating examination of family dynamics in a world full of division and misinformation. His creative nonfiction has been published by Overland and Queerstories. By day, he teaches high school English.

Nalini Jacob-Roussety

Nalini is a 2026 Hot Desk fellow and a participant in the Abbotsford Convent writing residency. She is currently working on a campus novel in which an eccentric philosophy professor brings a series of ethical dilemmas to real life.

Cat Yen

Cat is a writer of memoir. She is interested in unearthing the complexity of gendered and working-class experiences of everyday life, especially those of people of colour. She was the winner of the SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition in 2021, a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow in 2024 and an inaugural Abbotsford Convent Writer Resident in 2026. Proudly the daughter of factory and retail workers with no creative credentials, she is a data analyst for her day job.

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