Kirli Saunders - Bindi

About the Event

Award-winning author and poet Kirli Saunders wrote Bindi as a call to action for young people to understand their role in conservation and caring for Country. Told in verse using both Gundungurra and English, this beautifully crafted junior fiction book reflects a young girl’s relationship with her family, her animals, her friends, her Country and her creativity. 

Kirli will be in conversation with Ellen van Neerven.

This FREE event takes place on Zoom. The Zoom meeting details form part of your ticket, emailed to you after registration.

You can also pre-order copies of Bindi and we'll happily ship them anywhere in Australia for free!

“Kirli is an incredible creator, and we are blessed to be able to publish her first work of junior fiction,”

said Magabala Publisher Rachel Bin Salleh. “We love Bindi so much we’ve asked Kirli to write a series.”

About the Book

Bindi is the story of an 11-year-old girl living on Gundungurra country, whose year doesn’t quite go to plan when she is lumped with a big art assignment, a drought, broken wrist AND the biggest bushfires her town has ever seen!

“I feel so grateful to our Community for teaching me Language as an adult, I didn’t grow up with Language due to our colonial history, so it was important for me to include it in Bindi for our young ones to have,” said Kirli.

Bindi offers a sensitive depiction of the trauma bushfires can inflict on a community, drawing on Australia’s recent and devastating bushfire season, as well as presenting the healing power of fire from a Cultural perspective. 

“I want them to recognise their role as Custodians of this land – that it’s all of our responsibility to preserve Language and Culture, and that this starts young. I want our First Nations children to feel seen, heard and understood and to be strong as they grow into their responsibility to Mother Earth.”

Kirli Saunders’ powerful poetic verse is wonderfully imagined and enhanced by Dub Leffler’s beautiful black-and-white illustrations.

Written ‘for those who plant trees’, Bindi won the inaugural WA Premier's Book Award and inaugural Daisy Utemorrah Award for an unpublished manuscript of junior or young adult fiction. Open to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people currently living in Australia, the Daisy Utemorrah Award includes a prize of $15,000 and a publishing contract with First Nations publisher Magabala Books.

About the Author

Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai Woman and award-winning international writer of poetry, plays and picture books. She is a teacher, cultural consultant and artist. In 2020, Kirli was named the NSW Aboriginal Woman of the Year.  Kirli created Poetry in First Languages, delivered by Red Room Poetry. Her debut picture book The Incredible Freedom Machines was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and CBCA notables. Her poetry collection, Kindred was shortlisted for the ABIA 2020 Book Awards. She is an esteemed judge for the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, QPF Val Vallis Award and Blake Poetry Prize.  About the Moderator

Ellen van Neerven is an Aboriginal Australian writer and poet. Their first book, Heat and Light, won the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards' David Unaipon Award for unpublished Indigenous writers, the 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Award's Indigenous Writers Prize and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2015