Jane Harrison is descended from the Muruwari people. Her first play Stolen, toured internationally and was co-winner of the 2012 RAKA Kate Challis Award. Rainbow’s End won the 2012 Drovers Award for best touring production, and both Stolen and Rainbow’s End have been featured on secondary school curricula.
Harrison's most recent play The Visitors premiered at Sydney Festival in 2020 and will be published as a novel in 2022. Her novel Becoming Kirrali Lewis won the 2014 Black & Write! Prize, and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
Jane is the Artistic Director of Blak & Bright First Nations Literary Festival and believes that stories have the power to reframe our national identity.
Blak & Bright brings together the world’s oldest storytelling traditions in bold and innovative ways. Featuring over 67 of the country’s most exciting storytellers in a program of 27 events from oral stories to epic novels, from poems to monologues, from history to activism.
Curated to give voice to stories that are rarely heard, guests include Tony Birch, Claire G. Coleman, Elders, Jazz Money, Nardi Simpson, Ellen van Neerven, Tara June Winch, Chelsea Watego, Alexis Wright, Yung Tent Embassy activist plus more.
‘’We have designed a bold new festival with new talent, new stories and new events, delivered in new hybrid ways, while bringing back old favourites (artists and events). We figure Blak stories are needed more urgently than ever, in the face of climate change, pandemics, Blak Lives Matter. We need access to connection, compassion and country through stories. Here’s to Blak words live.’’ Jane Harrison, Festival Director.
Blak & Bright First Nations Literary Festival, Thursday 17 until Sunday 20 March 2022. www.blakandbright.com.au @blakandbright
Media information: Magda Petkoff, Purple Media, 0409 436 473, magda@purplemedia.com.au