Ari & Rena

Ari Mills

Ari Mills is a proud Kuku Yalanji and Murrinh Patha writer and poet. They incorporate their love for community, Queerness and Black liberation in their writing. They come to explore Black Queer love stories in truth telling. Ari aims to create love spaces for mob to share and grow with each other, showcasing our mobs’ creativity and innovation. Their work has been published in Nangamay Mana Djurali (Dream Gather Grow), an Indigenous LGBTQI+ anthology, and in Australian Poetry’s Best of Australian Poems 2023. Featuring new works in writing festivals such as the Emerging Writers, Blak & Bright and more. Recently, displaying their artworks in partnerships with the likes of the Incinerator and Mixed Zoning gallery. 

Rena Priest

Rena Priest is a poet, essayist, and enrolled member of the Lummi Nation. She served as the sixth Washington State Poet Laureate (2021-2023) and was the first Indigenous person to hold this post. She has received a Washington State Book Award and an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award. She is also the recipient of residencies and fellowships from Hedgebrook, Storyknife, Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, the Academy of American Poets, Indigenous Nations Poets, and the University of Washington Libraries. Her first collection, Patriarchy Blues, received an American Book Award. She has edited two anthologies, and her forthcoming collection of essays, Positively Uncivilized, will be published by Raven Chronicles Press as the winner of their 2024 Keepers of the Fire Award. Her poems appear in Yellow Medicine Review, Poetry Magazine, Poem-a-day at Poets.org, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Priest holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and works as a freelance writer and speaker.

The project is curated by Blak & Bright and delivered by the Melbourne UNESCO City of Literature Office, with support from Creative Australia.