Stori: Storytelling in Melanesia

Tahlia Bowen-Guise (she/her) is a writer of Papua New Guinean and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.

Mereani Qalovakawasa is a multidisciplinary Fijian artist based in Naarm, Melbourne. Her experiences of living with lupus have inspired her storytelling – with her hands, sewing and quilting and with her voice, singing with the Pasefika Vitoria Choir.

Ella Benore Rowe is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, community hairdresser, cultural leader, podcaster and educator, business owner and solo Mum.

Koteka Lali Kuragan Wenda is a young West Papuan activist, cultural performer and digital storyteller. As international spokesperson for the Free West Papua campaign, she speaks passionately about her people’s ongoing struggle for independence from Indonesian colonial rule. Her advocacy across Indigenous rights, climate justice, and decolonisation is grounded in her lived experience of displacement and colonial violence – having spent her early years in a refugee settlement on the border of West Papua and Papua New Guinea and later raised in the United Kingdom after her family sought political asylum.