Totally Lit: Word of Mouth – home and hope
Dates
Monday 29 September | 1.15pm - 2.15pm
General Admission | $10 + booking fee
Concession | $7 + booking fee
Ages
All ages
Duration
60 mins
Site access information
WA Maritime Museum is mostly accessible, excluding tours aboard the HMAS Ovens. Call 1300 134 081 for assistance. More about accessibility and amenities >
This panel discussion is focused on how oral story traditions might inform our thinking about being human.
Storytelling is about connecting, preserving and sharing and empowering. In the era of ChatGPT, stories may be more important than ever.
This conversation between friends and colleagues, Chemutai Glasheen and Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes offers an opportunity for audiences to gain insight into the significance of the oral storytelling traditions of their respective cultures and how these traditions have informed the evolution of their written work. ‘Hope’ is also a common theme shared by both writers and Chemutai and Yirga will reflect on the relevance of hope in their writing.
About the artists
Chemutai Glasheen is a teacher and a sessional academic at Curtin University. She writes fiction for young people and her work is influenced by her interest and experience in human rights and education. Her collection of short stories, I Am the Mau, published by Fremantle Press in 2023 is a celebration of our ubuntu: the invisible ties that bind us all together. Her work has been published in Unlimited Futures: Speculative, Visionary Blak+Black Fiction, Edited by Rafeif Ismail and Ellen van Neerven (Fremantle Press, 2022), ACE: Arresting Contemporary stories by Emerging Writers and in the Museum of Freedom and Tolerance website. She holds a PhD in creative writing from Curtin University.
Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes is a writer, poet and human rights academic from Lalibela, Ethiopia. He currently lives in Boorloo (Perth, Western Australia), where he is the Director of the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University. He won the 2024 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award for his bilingual memoir/poetry collection የተስፋ ፈተና / Trials of Hope. His Amharic poetry was published in a solo collection titled የተራሮች ጩኸት (The Cry of Mountains), and has been performed widely on stage and radio in Ethiopia. His English short stories, translated poems and memoir have been published in anthologies and journals, including Westerly, Unlimited Futures (Fremantle Press) and Stories of Perth (Seizure). Yirga was a 2023 Red Room Poetry Emerging Poet in Residence and one of thirty poets featured in Red Room’s ‘30in30’ National Australian Poetry Month celebrations.
