MAD Poetry Workshop: National (online)

Mohammad Awad is a Health and Psychology student working in mental health, striving to destigmatise mental health in diverse communities. A writer/artist/musician/poet who’s running out of ways to express himself.

Ruby Hillsmith is a writer, editor and poet based in Melbourne, on Wurundjeri land. She was the inaugural 2020 Writeability poetry fellow at Writers Victoria and was selected as a 2020–21 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow for her non-fiction project exploring the culture of Australian psychiatry, Little Islands, Dead Sea.

Anna Jacobson is a poet and artist from Brisbane. Amnesia Findings (UQP, 2019) is her first full-length poetry collection, which won the 2018 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. In 2020 Anna won the Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing (Open Creative Nonfiction), was awarded a Queensland Writers Fellowship to write her next poetry collection ‘Anxious in a Sweet Store’, and was shortlisted in the Spark Prize.

Tim Heffernan is a Deputy Commissioner with the NSW Mental Health Commission and has worked for over a decade as a Mental Health Peer Worker. He is co-editor, with Alise Blayney, of Verity La’s, ‘Clozapine Clinic – The Frater Project.’ With Alise he also established Mad Poetry as part of the 2016 Wollongong Writers Festival. Mad Poetry also featured in the 2017 Queensland Poetry Festival.