Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Monday 22 June
7:00 PM - 8:15 PM
Location
wheelercentre.com
With entries now open for the third year of The Next Chapter, the Wheeler Centre’s writers’ scheme, join three recipients and their mentors – Arthur Bolkas and Arnold Zable, Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi and Ellen van Neerven, and Jean Bachoura and Maria Tumarkin – to discuss the varied forms support for emerging writers can take, and the unique qualities of writing mentorships. Hosted by Veronica Sullivan.
Presented annually, The Next Chapter gives ten outstanding emerging writers the time and space to write, and a 12-month mentorship with an experienced writer. Through these mentorships, tomorrow’s great voices are steered and supported by today’s literary icons.
Presented in partnership with the Emerging Writers’ Festival.
This event was originally scheduled to take place at the 2020 Sydney Writers' Festival.
Watch this event on this page, from 7pm.
Featuring
Jean Bachoura
Jean Bachoura is an inaugural recipient of the Wheeler Centre’s scheme for writers, The Next Chapter. His work is reflective of a life lived between cultures: born in Damascus, raised in Syria, Lebanon and Australia. In 2016 he was awarded the Deborah Cass Prize for his piece 'Night Falls'. In 2017 he wrote 'No Man’s Land', an account of his journey crossing the border into Syria. In 2019, his multi-platform project TRETINOIN was awarded The Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-fiction.
Maria Tumarkin
Maria Tumarkin writes books, essays, reviews, and pieces for performance and radio; she collaborates with sound and visual artists and has had her work carved into dockside tiles. She is the author of four books of ideas. Her fourth ...
Arnold Zable
Arnold Zable is a highly acclaimed novelist, storyteller and human rights advocate. His works include Scraps of Heaven, Violin Lessons, The Fighter, which was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and a New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award, and his most recent work The Watermill. Zable lives in Melbourne.
Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi
Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi AKA Vika Mana, is a proud Torres Strait Islander and Tongan storyteller that takes many forms. They descend from the Zagareb and Dauareb tribes of Mer Island and the village of Fahefa in Tonga. They perform poetry, write criticism, breathe life into worlds and lastly, can share a joke or two, max. That’s because they only know exactly two jokes.They've written for Overland, The Big Issue, the Saturday Paper and several publications both at home and internationally. Vika is also a part of the FAMILI collective, rapping about Afros and abolition. In 2019, Meleika became one of ten writers that were chosen to be a part of The Next Chapter scheme from the Wheeler Centre.
Arthur Bolkas
Arthur Bolkas is a 2019 Next Chapter recipient. Raised on welfare in a Greek migrant family, Arthur was school captain and dux of his final year. However, in the fourth year of an Arts/Law degree, his life descended into drug addiction and imprisonment.
Arthur has been a cabbie, facilitated men’s groups, worked with at-risk youth and prisoners, run a church, and featured in the general media. A criminologist, speaker, actor, and father of two sons, he currently has three books on the go. Especially through the difficult times, writing has been a life-giving source for Arthur.
Ellen van Neerven
Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award ...
Veronica Sullivan
Veronica Sullivan is the Wheeler Centre’s Head of Programming. She is a board member of Overland literary journal and a member of the Custodial Committee of the Kat Muscat Fellowship. Previously, she was a board member ...