Monikka Eliah

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TDTF Writer-in-Residence Monikka Eliah is an Assyrian writer and performer. She participated in NToP’s Page to Stage program, CuriousWorks Breakthrough Screen Writing Program, Netflix and Co-curious’ On The Brightside Screenwriting Program and STC’s Rough Draft. Her work features in SBS Voices, Runway Journal, Southerly, Kill Your Darlings, The Lifted Brow, Meanjin and The Saturday Paper. She received Southlands Breakthrough Award 2018, Wheeler Centre Playwright Hot Desk Fellowship 2020, Ausco Resilience Grant 2021, Wheeler Center Next Chapter Award 2022, runner up in the SBS Emerging Writers Competition 2022 and Creative Australia grant 2024. She is working on her debut novel.

Daniel Alwan

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TDTF Writer-in-Residence Daniel Alwan - A queer Australian-Lebanese writer and over-thinker based on unceded Gadigal land. His short stories have been shortlisted for the 2022 Furphy Literary Award and published in the 2023 KYD New Australian Fiction anthology. He holds an MA in English from the University of Sydney, where he also works as an English language teacher. He will be working on a collection of short stories, and a debut novel.

Orlando Silver

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TDTF Writer-in-Residence Orlando Silver (he/they) is a trans queer writer living and working on Darug and Gundungurra lands. He is a playwright, fiction writer and poet. Orlando often focuses on the intersections of desire, transgender identities and embodiment. He is the author of the plays “Soft Daddy” (2024) and “Escape Velocity” (2003). He is the editor of the kink anthology “I Write the Body” (Kith Books). His new anthology “Take it Outside” is due for publication in early 2025 through his new imprint, Incision Press. He will be working on his new novel, “Scratch”.

Norman Saadi Nikro

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TDTF Writer-in-Residence: Norman Saadi Nikro

Norman Saadi Nikro is a writer and academic of Australian and Lebanese background. His books include The Fragmenting Force of Memory: Self, Literary Style, and Civil War in Lebanon (2012), Milieus of ReMemory: Relationalities of Violence, Trauma, and Voice (2019), Nafssiya: Edward Said’s Affective Phenomenology of Racism (2024), and is co-editor of the volume Insidious Trauma in the Production of Eastern African Literatures and Cultures (2024). He resides in Sydney as an independent scholar and writer. He will be working on his memoir.

Mersija Ilic

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Mersija Ilic is an emerging writer who lives and works in the South -Western Sydney suburb of Campbelltown, NSW.  

She is from a bilingual and bicultural background, and this weaves its way through her storytelling. In her writing, Mersija explores the issues faced by women when confronted with domestic violence, lack of education and fear.

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Neel Banerjee

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Neel Banerjee is an intercultural theatre practitioner based in Sydney, Australia. An emerging creative leader in Western Sydney, Neel was born and raised in India and now resides on Dharug land as a proud first-generation settler. His work spans cultural development, audience engagement, community capacity building, education, and training, all rooted in the transformative power of live theatre. 

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Elizabeth Mora

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Elizabeth Mora (she/her) is an educator, self-taught creative, and emerging multilingual writer living on Bidjigal land and working across Western Sydney. A first-generation immigrant and descendant of Ecuadorian and Latin American diasporas across the Global North, her work traces indirect paths to community, belonging, and freedom.

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Amani Haydar

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Amani Haydar is an author, visual artist, and advocate for women’s health and safety based on Dharug land. Amani’s ground-breaking feminist memoir The Mother Wound (Pan Macmillan, 2021) explores the effects of domestic abuse and state-sanctioned violence on women and has received several awards including the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction and the 2022 Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year.

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