Ellen van Neerven Editor & Author

Desert Pea Media (DPM) is a not-for-profit organisation working with First Nations Australians to create social change through collaborative storytelling. DPM collaborates with First Nations communities and schools across Australia, running workshops that focus on empowering First Nations youth and encouraging pride in their cultural identity. Their workshops reinvigorate traditional storytelling culture through the contemporary mediums of music, song, film and performance. DPM have run over 100 workshops in more than 70 remote and regional communities across Australia including Wilcannia, Cowra, Townsville, Alice Springs, Moree, Tiwi Islands and Thursday Island. Their workshops have helped launch a number of First Nations hip hop groups, including the B-Town Warriors from Bourke, who won a National Indigenous Music Award in 2018. All royalties from the book will go towards an annual training and development event that brings together young people, trainees, artists and mentors from remote and regional communities to share, learn and create together.

Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer and editor of Mununjali Yugambeh heritage from south-east Queensland. Ellen’s fictional debut Heat and Light (UQP, 2014) was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. Ellen is also the author of two volumes of poetry, Comfort Food (UQP, 2016) and Throat (UQP, 2020).