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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Artist

Koteka Wenda

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.

Wednesday 16 September, 8pm-9pm

Stori: Storytelling in Melanesia

Join storytellers Ella Rowe, Tahlia Bowen, Koteka Wenda and Mereani Qalovakawasa for Stori: Storytelling in Melanesia. Through words, art, music and Tok Stori, hear spellbinding tales of their homelands.