3pm - 4pm | Writers of Change: the archipelago writers collective and emerging writers in Indonesia's refugee community

Writing reimagines the horizons of possibility and opens up a new space beyond disenfranchisement and marginalisation. 

Through literature, writers who are displaced can imagine new futures and write their own representations of their community. In Indonesia, a group of writers has been doing exactly this.   

The archipelago is a writers collective between Australia and Indonesia that trains new writers who are refugees in Indonesia towards professional publication and connects them with mentorship. This year they launched a new magazine on migration that publishes literature, journalism, art and photography each month: thearchipelago.org.  

Join us in conversation between four writers of the archipelago: Warsan Weedhsan writes on the experiences of refugee women in Indonesia and East Africa; JN Joniad explores mental health impacts of displacement through his journalism; Erfan Dana writes of limbo in Indonesia's outer islands; MA Raha writes fiction on the lives of girls in Afghanistan and Iran.