Update: Online event

Webinar: Writing Gender

The Sydney Review of Books are delighted to be partnering with the Writing and Society Research Centre and the Gender UNLIMITED* team at Western Sydney University to host a public webinar to explore the role of writing in generating new knowledge and understandings around gender. This event aims to bring together Humanities and Arts practitioners into national conversations over advancing gender equity in the Higher Education sector.

In conversation with award-winning writers Jazz Money, Roanna Gonsalves, Yves Rees and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, we will explore the role of writing in generating new knowledge and understandings around gender, and how writing can reshape public discourses about gender and culture, especially in its capacity to explore cultural testimony, embodied experience, alternative histories, and future worlds.

A series of short essays by each of the speakers will be published in the SRB in the lead-up to the event.

Friday 17 September 2021
10.15am – 12pm
Free, online via Zoom

RSVP essential, register on Eventbrite


10.15am Welcome Address and Acknowledgement of Country

Dr Anne Jamison, Deputy Director Writing and Society Research Centre

Dr Kieryn McKay, SAGE Project Coordinator

Professor Michelle Trudgett, DVC Indigenous Leadership

10.30am – 12pm Webinar

Jazz Money, Western Sydney University

Dr Roanna Gonsalves, UNSW

Dr Yves Rees, La Trobe University

Moderator: Professor Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, University of Wollongong


Jazz Money (she/they) is a Wiradjuri poet and artist currently based on Gadigal land. Her practice is centred around the written word while producing works that encompass installation, digital, film and print. Jazz’s writing has been widely performed and published nationally and internationally. In 2020 Jazz was awarded the David Unaipon Award from the State Library of Queensland and a First Nations Emerging Career Award from the Australian Council for the Arts. Her debut collection how to make a basket is available from September 2021 with University of Queensland Press.

Dr Roanna Gonsalves (she/her) is the author of the award-winning book of short fiction The Permanent Resident (UWAP) published in India and South Asia as Sunita De Souza Goes To Sydney (Speaking Tiger). Her four-part radio series ‘On the tip of a billion tongues’, commissioned and broadcast by ABC RN’s Earshot program, is a portrayal of contemporary India through its multilingual writers. Roanna is a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Endeavour Award and The Bridge Awards’ inaugural Varuna – Cove Park Writing Residency Scotland. Roanna serves on the Board of Writing NSW and works as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at UNSW.

Dr Yves Rees (they/them) is a writer and historian living on unceded Wurundjeri land. At present, Yves is a Lecturer in History at La Trobe University and the co-host of history podcast Archive Fever. Yves was awarded the 2020 Calibre Essay Prize for their essay ‘Reading the Mess Backwards’. Their memoir All About Yves: Notes from a Transition is published by Allen & Unwin in August 2021.

Prof Fiona Probyn-Rapsey (she/her) is Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong, where she has just finished teaching a brand new subject named ‘Feminisms: Love, Rage and Activism’. Her interest in gender goes back a long way, including having taught Gender Studies at USYD for over a decade prior to moving to UOW in 2016. She is increasingly drawn to thinking about connections between gender, the non-human and the environmental.


Published August 30, 2021
Part of Writing Gender: Essays on gender, knowledge and writing. All Writing Gender essays →