BWF announces 2023 curators, Country of Focus

The Brisbane Writers Festival has announced the curators of its 2023 festival program.

First Nations artist Daniel Browning, a descendent of the Bundjalung and Kullilli peoples of far northern New South Wales and south-western Queensland and host of ABC Radion National’s The Art Show, and First Nation artist Samantha Faulkner, a Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal woman from the Wuthuthi/Yadhaigana peoples, Cape York Peninsula and Badu and Moa Islands, and editor of the forthcoming Growing Up Torres Strait Islander in Australia (Black Inc, 2024), will curate the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander strands of the program, respectively.

Ori Diskett is curating the cross arts program Gaming the Narrative, while the youth programs curators are Megan Daley (Children’s Books Daily), who will shape Word Play and Families, and writer Karen Lee, CEO of the Institute of Professional Editors, who will work on Love YA. Author Matthew Condon will curate the festival’s Brisbane Stories program.

This year’s Country of Focus for the festival will be South Korea, with the Country of Focus program to be curated by Sung-Ae Lee, who grew up in South Korea and later studied in both the US and Australia, before migrating to Australia in 1993, where she was awarded two PhDs in literature and Korean studies.

‘The BWF team is working with the curators to build a program of illuminating, challenging, moving and exciting author talks and panels,’ said the festival.

BWF introduced curators for its 60 year event in 2022, at which the festival’s first Region of Focus program invited Aotearoa New Zealand and Pasifika writers and artists to present at the event.

This year’s BWF will run from 10–14 May.

Pictured L–R: Daniel Browning, Samantha Faulkner

Category: Local news