Accessibility at Varuna

Shakira is an award-winning writer, researcher and advocate based at the University of Melbourne. She is the Chair of the Australian Muslim Women's Centre for Human Rights and has published widely on topics including gender violence, racism, disability and the far right.

Michelle is a storyteller, writer, editor, trainer, coach and mentor and a Gomeroi woman. Her academic background is in Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences, as well as Teaching and Learning. Michelle also has qualifications in Editing and Publishing, in Small Business, Life Coaching and Aboriginal Languages. An academic for many years, she remains an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney, where she teaches Academic and Scientific writing, and maintains her research interests in Ethics and Welfare and First Nations ways of Knowing, Being and Doing. Michelle is a person with Disability, a late-stage cancer survivor and a long-term sole supporting single mother of boys. She is also a Board member of MARION (formerly the ACT Writers Centre) and a past Director of People with Disability Australia.

Alexandra writes poetry and fiction; and is also an oral storyteller and community  facilitator. She has been commissioned by Running Dog and longlisted for the University of Canberra’s Vice Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize. In 2025 she undertook the Jerra Fellowship at Varuna. She is based in Brisbane and her work has been performed at Metro Arts, QAGOMA and the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts. She was also worked with Screech Theatre and The Light Ensemble where she sought to bring young artists with and without disability together to devise new work. Her work as a project manager and educator covers the cultural sector, educational environments from kindy to tertiary and community solar energy. She seeks to convey visceral experience in her work and to draw on  an expanded sense of the real.

Brendon is studying a PhD in creative writing at The University of Sydney, for which he was awarded the Arthur Macquarie Travelling Scholarship. His unpublished novel, The Rhinoceros was awarded a Varuna Writers’ Space fellowship, and his poem “split mind” was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Poetry Prize. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Rabbit Poetry, Overland, Australian Poetry Journal's Digital Publication, Quadrant, The Catholic Poetry Room, Verge, Vernacular Journal, and The Ekphrastic Review. He is a jazz musician and works as a music teacher. His work often explores the lived experience of mental illness. He lives and works on Wiradyuri country in regional New South Wales, Australia.