We’re excited to introduce you to our last team member for #EWF2022. For our final Staff Spotlight (for now!), we speak with Jen Nguyen, our new Associate Producer. Read on to learn more about Jen.

Hey Jen. How are you? Would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?

Hihi.

I’m the author of When I die slingshot my ashes onto the surface of the moon (Subbed In, 2019). Over the years I’ve published poetry, fiction, non-fiction and criticism in Overland, Australian Poetry Journal, Liminal Mag, Cordite Poetry Review, Meanjin blog, Best of Australian Poems 2021, Ultimo Press’ anthology ‘Everything, All At Once’ and City of Literature’s Poet Laureate Project, among others. In 2019 I was awarded a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship for poetry. I’ve also done some fiction editing with Rambutan Literary and was a junior editor/editorial mentee with Djed Press from 2018-2019.

I’m excited to be joining the EWF team as Associate Producer for 2022, walking in the footsteps of previous Associate Producer extraordinaire Diem Nguyen.

How have you participated in EWF before? What brings you back to the festival this time?

I was a Creative Producer for EWF in 2017, did the EWF Gazette as part of my uni course in 2018, was a festival artist in 2019 and 2020 and have been an attendee over the years.

I really love, appreciate and admire all the work that EWF does in supporting emerging writers and building community. I want to continue the good work all the current and previous programmers have done and built before me, actively working and consciously thinking about how to make the industry a more welcoming and nourishing space for all. To be able to do this collaboratively alongside such a wonderful team is an absolute dream.

You are a writer yourself, what influences and informs your work?

The unconscious/subconscious, viscerally physical, dreamy, nightmarish realms of [my(sometimes)] existence; what I can perceive with my senses and what I can’t + a marriage of stuff from the gut, heart, magic and mind (the mind that dreams alongside the mind that’s concerned with material physical stuff).

I love it when I read some writing or encounter a good bit of storytelling (in any form) and I have to put it down and just digest it and stuff. It feeds me creatively, passionately.

What else are you working on in this present time?

It’s been over two years since my debut chapbook was published. Both my writing and I have transformed a lot since then. I feel ready and want to publish another book so I’m working on a poetry+prose manuscript with new writing as well as all the stuff I’ve published in lit mags/journals/online over the years. My vision is for it to be a fuller collection. I don’t want to distinguish between poetry, fiction and nonfiction in my manuscript but I want it to seamlessly contain all three.

What are your simple pleasures? What brings you joy?

My cat rolling around in the backyard and getting dirt in her fur, rain, lucid dreaming, manifestations appearing in the 3D, playing video games, dying someday and being released from this flesh body, k-pop dance choreography, the moon, anime, stray cats approaching me on the street, synchronicity, the ocean, large jasmine milk tea with herbal jelly (no sugar, standard ice), sleeping, limitlessness, costco runs, flowers, sun, the wind, nighttime, knowing there’s much more to life than what I can currently perceive, the void <3

Finally, what are you reading/watching/listening/consuming?

Replaying XCOM2 for the fifth time cos I just got it on Nintendo Switch. Also, playing Genshin Impact (I’m AR56 lol).

Watching the second season of Kimetsu No Yaiba, second season Vanitas No Carte and final season Shingeki No Kyojin.

I’m gently wading through How to Make a Basket by Jazz Money, Eunice Andrada’s Take Care, Lonely Castle In the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura and Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles. I’m also reading up on and researching lucid dreaming, astral travelling, dimensional jumping, and reality shifting and attempting them every now and then.

I’m listening to a lot of song/edit audio playlists for all my [very real and not made up] imaginary scenarios. Also, this song/edit audio playlist account.