Canberra Writers Festival | Ghosts of the Past with Omar Musa & Steve MinOn

Ghosts of the Past

How do the ghosts of our ancestors and their legacies haunt and define us? This is a conversation about how books can help us journey into the past and ask challenging questions about identity, intergenerational debt and complicity. Canberra region acclaimed poet, playwright, author and artist, Bornean-Australian Omar Musa has just released Fierceland, a novel about siblings reckoning with the destruction that built a father's fortune in Borneo. Omar will be joined by rising star Steve MinOn who in First Name Second Name reveals his turbulent family history: from his Chinese great-grandfather’s life on the goldfields in Queensland, to his Scottish grandparents’ migration as 'Ten-pound Poms', and his own coming of age and coming out in Brisbane and London. Moderated by ANU Associate Professor of English, Julieanne Lamond.

Steve MinOn was an internationally awarded advertising copywriter and a restaurateur before becoming a writer of fiction. He grew up in North Queensland and he now lives in Meanjin/Brisbane. Steve has written often about outsiders and his family’s mixed-race ancestral history, and his articles and short stories have been published in SBS Voices, Mamamia and various anthologies. He won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer in the 2023 Queensland Literary Awards for First Name Second Name.

Omar Musa is an author, visual artist and poet from Queanbeyan, Australia. He has released one novel, four books of poetry (including Killernova), five hip-hop records, and an acclaimed one man play, Since Ali Died. His work has appeared in The Best Australian Stories and Best of Australian Poems. His debut novel, Here Come the Dogs, was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Miles Franklin Award. He was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015. He has had several solo exhibitions of his woodcuts, including his most recent collection All My Memories Are Mistranslations. His latest novel is Fierceland. He is based between Borneo and Brooklyn.