André Dao

André Dao is a Melbourne-based writer, editor and artist. His debut novel, Anam, won the 2021 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. His writing has appeared in Meanjin, Sydney Review of Books, Griffith Review, The Monthly, The Lifted Brow, Cordite, The Saturday Paper, New Philosopher, Arena Magazine, Asia Literary Review and elsewhere.

His residencies and fellowships include an AsiaLink Arts Residency in Hanoi, an Emerging Writers Festival-Ubud Writers Festival Island to Island residency across Indonesia, and a Wheeler Centre Hotdesk Fellowship. In 2015 he was selected as one of Melbourne Writers Festival’s 30 Best Writers under 30.

He is the co-founder of Behind the Wire, the award-winning oral history project documenting the stories of the adults and children who have been detained by the Australian government after seeking asylum in Australia. His work for Behind the Wire includes a Quill award winning article for The Saturday Paper and the Walkley Award-winning podcast, The Messenger. He co-edited Behind the Wire’s collection of literary oral histories They Cannot Take the Sky.

He was previously the editor-in-chief of Right Now, an online human rights magazine. In recognition of that work he was a finalist for the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2011 Young People’s Human Rights Medal. He is also a member of the Manus Recording Project Collective, whose work has been exhibited in the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne and the City Gallery, Wellington.