Miles Franklin award-winning author Shankari Chandran’s latest novel, Safe Haven, is about displacement and asylum. So too, Jordana Silverstein’s groundbreaking examination of Australia’s treatment of child refugees, Cruel Care, a meticulously researched work of non-fiction.
Nadine J. Cohen, author and co-founder of Hope for Nauru, a not-for-profit serving refugees and asylum seekers, interviews Shankari and Jordana about the creative tools they use to communicate with readers, and hope to effect change.
While these two writers use different genres to examine the refugee experience, at their heart both books are about the children, families and communities our government policies impact.
Shankari Chandran is an Australian Tamil lawyer and the author of the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award winning Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, as well as Unfinished Business, Song of the Sun God, and The Barrier. Her latest book Safe Haven was published in May 2024.
Jordana Silverstein is an award-winning historian and senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of Anxious Histories: Narrating the Holocaust in Jewish Communities at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century and Cruel Care: A History of Children at our Borders, which was shortlisted for the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards.
Nadine J. Cohen is a writer with bylines in The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, SMH/Age, ABC, Harper's Bazaar and more. Her debut novel, Everyone and Everything, was nominated for two Australian Book Industry Awards and named Booktopia's debut release of the year.
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