THIN RED LINES TURNS 5

For our last trick before graduating past pre-K age, we're getting extravagant.

A little quick math will tell you that 2 x 4 = a night of out of this world performances.

So, to celebrate this milestone and the core collaborative spirit that drives us, we're featuring four writerly/artistic pairings and friendships.

The lineup of paired perfection features:

MACKENZIE LEE

Mackenzie Lee is a queer First Nations poet currently living, working, and studying on Ngunnawal and Ngambri lands. With Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman, and Karajarri ancestry, mixed with Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Anglo-Australian heritage, they are a creative whose ties to culture, country, and saltwater connects them to their storyteller ancestors. Lee writes a variety of poems in response and reaction to the world around them, and when they aren't writing poetry, they're working full-time as an IT Technical Officer and studying part-time as an English Major.

JENNA LEE

Image credit: Gianna Rizzo

Jenna Lee is a Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri Saltwater woman with mixed Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Anglo-Australian ancestry. Driven to create

work in which she, her family, and the broader mixed First Nations community see themselves represented, Lee builds on a foundation of her father’s teachings of culture and her mother’s teachings of paper craft. Working primarily in installation Lee creates objects, works on paper, photography, video, projection and sound.

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PARMINDER KAUR BHANDAL

Imagine credit: Sebastian Kainey

Parminder Kaur Bhandal (she/her) is a visual artist, librarian, and poet who meditates on unblocking the heart chakra. Her art-making is imbued with love for oneself and others, compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. She gives space to intrinsic and deep truths that cannot be expressed in words, but rather prayers. Re-centering peripheral bodies and disrupting traditional narratives around people and place, she utilizes forms of Photography, Video, and Installation to pay her respects to the community, history, country, and time that have generously nurtured her. Parminder believes that art is a gratitude ritual for life, and therefore she continues to advocate for the liberation of people and country from unsustainable and inhuman practices. Practices that separate country and people from their hearts.

CHARAF TARTOUSSI

Image credit: Brendan Bonsack

Charaf Tartoussi is a middle-eastern-muslim writer and performance poet. Their work can be found in publications including Cordite and the upcoming SBS emerging writers anthology. Founder of griffin-speak: a spoken word event that championed the voices of POC  in and around Melbourne from 2016 to 2022 and creative producer of Slamalamadingdong from 2020 to 2024, creating space for creative storytelling and artistic expression at the core of their practice. As a performer,  they have featured in various festivals and events around the country. Last year they debuted their first collaborative stage show: Aza (wake): stories of grief in diaspora.

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GENEVIEVE CALLAGHAN

Genevieve Callaghan is a writer and musician based in Naarm, on Wurundjeri Country. Her book, One Story a Day, was published in 2022 by No More Poetry, and her band Water Signs released their debut EP New Names At Midnight in 2023, recorded at Persimmon Studios. In her work, Genevieve attempts to capture some aspect of the transient, and convey it.

FELIX GARNER-DAVIS

Felix Garner-Davis is a writer and architecture student, having previously studied literature. His book drone was published in 2021 by no more poetry. Before that, he edited a collection of poetry and fiction called Malevolent Soap.

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ANDY JACKSON

Andy Jackson is a poet and essayist, creative writing teacher at the University of Melbourne, and a Patron of Writers Victoria. He was the inaugural Writing the Future of Health Fellow, has co-edited disability-themed issues of Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal, and is on the editorial team for disability poetry journal Sunder. He has featured at literary events and arts festivals across Australia, and on ABC's Radio National and the 7.30 Report. Andy's latest poetry collection is Human Looking, which won the ALS Gold Medal and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry. He lives and works on Dja Dja Wurrung country.

QUINN EADES

Quinn Eades is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at The University of Melbourne. A writer, researcher, editor and poet, his book Rallying was awarded the 2018 Mary Gilmore Award for best first book of poetry. He is the author of all the beginnings: a queer autobiography of the body and the co-editor of Going Postal: More than ‘Yes’ or ’No’, and Offshoot: Contemporary Life Writing Methodologies and Practice. Quinn's creative research is grounded in experimental and hybrid writing practices and works across/through trans, queer, and feminist theories of the body, poetry and life writing.