Aileen Crowe is a nun of the Franciscan Order of Missionaries of Mary in Sydney, Australia. She has been a long-term advocate of refugee rights. She was awarded a PhD from the University of New South Wales for her research into the refugee determination process for asylum seekers who have arrived by plane.

‘Acts of Cruelty: Australia’s Immigration Laws and Experiences of People Seeking Protection After Arriving By Plane’ was called by Ngareta Rossell “a book about passion, danger, departures and arrivals. It’s about the desires and disappointments of people seeking Australia’s protection who arrive by plane. It’s also about the dishonesty and deceit practised by the Australian Department of Immigration whose xenophobic nature goes all the way back to the White Australia Policy, terra nullius and the early days of the colony.”

Listen to Siobhan Reddel read her story about the experiences of Jack, the young kookaburra.

Lorraine Shannon is a keen gardener and nature-writer living in Wentworth Falls, NSW. She has been a long-term environmental activist as a member of the Association for Literature and the Environment, and founding member of Kangaloon creative ecologies. She is also a member of Wild Mountain Collective.

‘Signs, but No Wonder’ reflects on the bushfires that engulfed Australia’s Blue Mountains in 2019-20 through a mediation on the etymology of ‘shambles’ with its image of inhumanely slaughtered animals in the streets of 18th and 19th century London. Shannon makes an appeal for recognition of the realities of the pain and grief of animals, so many of which succumbed, uncounted, to the inferno.

Philipa Rothfield is Honorary Professor of Dance and Philosophy of the Body at the University of Southern Denmark, and Honorary Faculty at La Trobe University. She is Creative Adviser at Dancehouse, Melbourne, and co-author of Practising with Deleuze, (Edinburgh University Press). Her book, Dance and the Corporeal Uncanny (Routledge) was published in 2020.

‘The Taste of Reality’ by Philipa Rothfield

On 14 January 2020, the Australian bushfires were such that Melbourne experienced the worst air quality in the world. Breathing this air, the author is put in touch with the fires differently relative to the way she can experience them through media images and stories. How can this literal taste of reality become powerful caution against desire, once the fires are out, for a return to business as usual?

Raimond Gaita is Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne; Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy, King’s College London; and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. His books include Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception (Macmillan), and Romulus, My Father (Text Publishing).

‘Creatures of the Earth’ by Raimond Gaita

Returning from overseas in 2019 to a continent aflame, Gaita reflects on the question of his visceral, bodily relationship to the Earth, to this land, and, in particular, on the question of the possibility for political and ethical fellowship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Sally Gardner is a former dancer. She was a Senior Lecturer in Art and Performance at Deakin University from 2004 to 2017 where she remains an Honorary Research Fellow. She is co-editor of Writings on Dance journal.

‘Is Fire a Feminist Issue?’ by Sally Gardner

The author draws on the insights of the philosopher, Luce Irigaray. Reflecting on language and imagery generated around the bushfires of 2019-20 she questions its warlike and nature-blaming character. She notes the life-affirming and nurturant properties of fire (as also of air and water) and the danger of denying these, erasing or excluding them from the collective psyche.