FREE EVENT
Coming Through The Darkness
Moderator: Beejay Silcox • Oceane Campbell, Cecile Barral, Hugh Poate and Kaya Wilson
Four prominent Canberrans confide their unflinching personal quests for truth and explore what happens when you dare to dig deep for answers and face your fears head-on.
Artist
OCEANE CAMPBELL
Oceane Campbell is the co-author of The Silence Between Us: A Mother and Daughter’s Conversation Through Suicide and into Life, a double memoir tracing a mother and daughter trying to understand and rebuild their relationship after the daughter’s suicide attempt. Oceane is a proud and passionate midwife who has also completed a psychology degree and worked in corporate advisory and policy writing. In 2022, she was named Newcastle Woman of the Year for her advocacy work in mental health and work as a midwife with LGBTQI+ families accessing maternity care.
Artist
CECILE BARRAL
Cécile Barral is the mother of three adult children, a grandmother, a gardener, a bush lover and a journal keeper. She is a psychotherapist with over 35 years of experience specialising in complex developmental trauma and has a special interest in the use of writing to help process such traumas. Cécile is very actively involved in ANZAP (Australia and New Zealand Association of Psychotherapy), being on its teaching faculty and management committee.
Artist
HUGH POATE
Hugh Poate is the father of Private Robert Poate, who was killed in Afghanistan on 29 August 2012. A former agricultural economist, Hugh has been undertaking economic research for most of his professional life and has put this experience to use in researching, for over five years, the incident in which his son was killed. Compelling and enraging, Failures of Command: The death of Private Robert Poate, is the story of the true facts surrounding the devastating loss of three soldiers.
Artist
KAYA WILSON
Kaya Wilson is a writer and tsunami scientist based in Australia. His non-fiction writing blends essay and memoir to explore universal themes of identity, gender and origin. Kaya was the winner of the 2019 Writing NSW Varuna Fellowship. Beautiful As Any Other is Kaya’s trailblazing memoir.
Moderator
BEEJAY SILCOX
Beejay Silcox is a writer and literary critic. Her reviews and cultural essays regularly appear in national arts publications and are increasingly finding an international audience. Beejay has stories to tell. She’s been kicked in the head by a gorilla, blessed by a voodoo priest, and stuck in quicksand; she eloped in Las Vegas and drove to Timbuktu in a car held together with a bra-strap. She’s recently returned to Canberra after a stint in Cairo.