Byron Bibliotherapy

26/11/2025

This looks so awesome!

In this online feedback course, children's book author Jemima Shafei-Ongu will provide feedback on your writing for children over five months.

24/11/2025

Art installation

22/11/2025

It started with , and her textile creation at the Gold Coast art exhibition she helped organise. Great job! 🙌

Then she strongly recommended I see , the first play by a Filipino-Australian playwright, Jordan Shea (I roped him into posing with my book while I held his program!)

It was excellent.

It was a play about the coup against Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. The dual timeline, showing the rise of Marcos Jnr nearly 40 years later, made the play relevant today.

Finally, proving there are way less than six degrees of separation in the Filipino diaspora, I met a GP até at a conference this month, to whom I excitedly babbled about the play. It turned out the actor playing the main contemporary character was her friend’s nephew!

If you ever get the opportunity to see “Malacañang Made Us”, make sure you do! It’s a really fascinating exploration of two critically important historical eras in Filipino history. And it was produced as a result of Shea winning a mentorship through 🎭 Great choice!

27/10/2025

My friend sent me this touching text message yesterday. I sincerely appreciated it.

They are the first person to have reached out like that. I didn’t even know they hadn’t believed me.

But many of us are on a journey of recognising and overcoming our internal biases, many of which have been planted, watered and fed by a powerful propaganda machine that seeks to divide us.

This short message meant the world to me, after struggling with the silence of a world gone mad these past two years.

So if you have thought of reaching out to pro-Palestinian friends and family, please do. They may not be at a stage where they can forgive or forget, but it IS likely they are feeling isolated and bereft.

They will have spent months trying to prise open doors of communication with people, to tell them about the vast atrocities occurring in Palestine and the unfair consequences faced by those speaking up for 🇵🇸, only to have those doors slammed in their face.

Really, the moral injuries and injustices have been nearly unbearable.

🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪🚪



🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️🗝️

22/10/2025

Thanks to my friend, retired teacher-librarian Dajo, for recommending THE CAT AT THE WALL to me, twice!

It is now one of my all-time favourite middle-grade novels. It’s from the perspective of an American girl who has been reincarnated not the body of a cat in Jerusalem in the Occupied West Bank. The cat witnesses and is an active participant when two IDF soldiers take over a local family’s home, little knowing their autistic son is home alone.

I have some criticisms, mainly of the humanisation of the soldiers, after months of seeing their despicable propaganda videos, but they verbally the book is so superb. A must read for everyone!

SIT is a short story collection (I’m not usually a fan) all based on chairs. My favourite was the first story, about a factory worker boy living in Jakarta.

I’ve included pages from another story about Gretchen, a German high school student who returns home from a school trip to Auschwitz with many questions about her family’s role in the Holocaust, and how such a thing could have happened in her country. (Hint: it’s called dehumanisation and it’s happening today in Occupied Palestine, sadly in the name of the victims of that very Holocaust.)

Swipe through to the end to see how very relevant children’s books are for inspiring empathy and critical reasoning, even if we in the world seem not to be able to heed the call to action when it is most needed.

🖊️ Deborah Ellis
📖

20/10/2025

A poem a day keeps the doctor away.

Text by Panda Wong, music by Hannah Wu. The original-format version was published in Loom Literary Journal. Read our interview with founder Adalya Nash Hussein here.

16/10/2025

Collective grief 🪦🕊️

I’ll share Saleh’s will in my next post, because it shows great integrity and strength.

13/10/2025

Repost •

‘Diary of a Young Doctor: Notes from the Genocide in Gaza’ by Ezzideen Shehab

• Out on 10 November 2025, available for preorder now •

A powerful eyewitness account of the genocide in Gaza by an extraordinary young writer and general physician.

•

Five days before 7 October 2023 a young Palestinian doctor returns to Gaza, having completed his medical studies abroad. His family gathers to celebrate his achievements and welcome him home. On 11 October forty-two members of his extended family are killed in an airstrike, and thus begins his incredible story of survival and service to his people.

Throughout it all, Dr Shehab posts regular updates on the situation for his patients and for his people. His clarity and humanity shine bright as he describes those he treats, and his incomprehension at the unfolding genocide and the silence of the world in the face of the ongoing atrocities. ‘Diary of a Young Doctor’ is an unforgettable testimony of one of the most shameful periods in recent history.

•

‘Diary of a Young Doctor’ is published by Readers and Writers Against the Genocide, an organisation founded by members of the Australian literary sector to call for a ceasefire, oppose the genocide in Gaza, and advocate for a free Palestine.

Readers and Writers Against the Genocide believes in the power of literature to transform lives and through this project aims to collaborate with Palestinian writers to share their stories and amplify their voices.

Sales of this book will contribute to financially supporting Dr Shehab, his family and his medical work.

•

Check the link in our bio for some bookstore friends of RWAG who have ordered Dr Ezzideen’s book and you can preorder from them now! - but *everyone* can order it from their local independent bookshop too!

•

AUTHOR INTERVIEWS AND EXTRACTS AVAILABLE

•

10/10/2025

Thank you to my friend Cathy, who gave a bouquet I’m sure was meant for her daughter to my daughter at Opening Night 🎭

Helping to salvage a massive parenting fail on my part 🙏

And Happy Birthday !

🎹 Credit:

07/10/2025

The political lessons of two years of the Gaza genocide.