Brought to you by The Benevolent Society, Post Adoption Resource Centre, this festival aims to showcase the varied adoption experiences and stories in an Australian context, amplifying the voices of lived experience and highlighting the lifelong nature and complexities of adoption.

We acknowledge our sponsors for this event NSW Forced Adoption Support Service and Committee on Adoption and Permanent Care.

We dedicate this event to the memory of Julia Kaylock who planted the seed and began the journey with us in establishing this inaugural Australian Adoption Literary Festival. Julia is the author of ‘A Child of the Clouds; A Memoir in Verse about Adoption Trauma and Recovery.’ We acknowledge Julia’s important contribution to the Australian adoption literary landscape by sharing her experience of adoption in print and helping bring together a working group of those with lived experience who are as passionate about bringing the words of those with lived experience into the light through this important event.

Opening Address & Mixed Genre Panel

Convener: Suzanne Leal
Suzanne Leal is the author of novels The Watchful Wife, The Teacher’s Secret and The Deceptions, winner of the Nib People’s Choice Prize and shortlisted for the Davitt Awards and the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award. Suzanne’s debut novel for junior YA readers, Running with Ivan, has been shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s History Awards. The online host of Thursday Book Club, Suzanne is an experienced facilitator and host at community, corporate and literary events.

Panellists: Ryan Gustafsson, EJ Clarence and Meg O'Shea
Ryan Gustafsson (they/he) is a Korean adoptee writer and researcher living in Naarm / Melbourne. Their essays have appeared in Against Disappearance: Essays on Memory (2022), Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia (2022), Sydney Review of Books, and Liminal Review of Books, among others. They are also co-founder of the Korean Adoptee Adoption Research Network and ibyangIN international network, and one half of the Adopted Feels podcast.

EJ is an emerging writer exploring the long narrative arc of Forced Adoption through contemporary fiction, narrative nonfiction and poetry. Recent works have appeared in Overland, Adoptee Voices, The Guardian and ABC ethics. EJ was recently interviewed on The Garrett podcast with Astrid Edwards.

Meg O'Shea is a comic maker, educator and research assistant based in Sydney, Australia (Gadigal and Wangal Country). She makes largely autobiographical and non-fiction work that has been published both locally and overseas, exhibited comic, animation and film work internationally, and taught comic making to university students, high school-aged students from migrant and refugee backgrounds with STARTTS, and art programs to elementary-aged students in Korea. As part of the Folio research project, she also assists in mapping, archiving and promoting contemporary Australian comics and the diverse artists and communities that created them.