St Peters Town Hall Literary Showcase - 2 May

Emmaly Gloria Langridge is a queer writer based in Sydney whose work draws on her upbringing in regional Far North Queensland. Her writing explores class, family mythology and the strange emotional landscapes of regional Australia, blending gritty realism with dark humour and moments of lyrical observation.

She is currently working on her debut novel, 'The Crucifixion of Cane Toads', a coming-of age story set in the bogan belly of Far North Queensland. The novel follows fourteen-year-old Willow as she navigates a volatile home life shaped by class, instability and violence, finding strange guidance in the cane toads that invade her suburban neighbourhood.

Through voice-driven fiction and autofiction, Emmaly is interested in how childhood environments shape identity, and how storytelling can transform memory, chaos and survival into meaning. Her work often returns to the uneasy edge where tenderness and brutality exist side by side.

Erin Gough is a fiction writer living on Gadigal land in Marrickville, whose award-winning work has been published globally. She is the author of three books for young adults: The Flywheel, which won the Ampersand Prize, Amelia Westlake, winner of the Readings Young Adult Book Prize and the NSW Premier’s Ethel Turner Prize for Young Adult Fiction, and Into the Mouth of the Wolf, winner of the Davitt Award for Young Adult fiction and a Children’s Book Council of Australia Older Readers Honour Book. Erin’s novella for adults, Distance, was a winner of the Griffith Review Novella Project. Her short fiction has been published in many journals and anthologies, including Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories, The Age, Best Australian Stories and New Australian Fiction.

eringough.com/

Gavin Roach has a Bachelor of Arts (Acting for the Screen and Stage), Bachelor of Arts (Acting for the Screen and Stage, Honours) CSU, Masters in Arts Management UTS & Masters in Writing for Performance VCA.

Gavin is the writer, performer & producer of Confessions of a Grindr Addict (Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Perth Adelaide, Launceston, Hobart & New Zealand), Any Womb Will Do (Sydney, Melbourne & New Zealand), I Can’t Say The F Word (Melbourne, Perth & New Zealand), The Measure of a Man (Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Hobart, Brisbane & Prague), All The Songs I Can’t Sing (Melbourne) & Your Silence Will Not Protect You (Melbourne, Sydney, Perth & Adelaide)

Gavin adapted and produced Beyond Priscilla: The Play & was the co-devisor & co-creative developer of We Were There, showcasing the stories of women during the HIV/AIDS crisis in Australia. Gavin's playwright credits include My Wife Peggy and That's One Damn Sexy Ape, both of which have been published by Currency Press.

Gavin's producing credits include Manwatching, All I See Is You, The Loneliness Project, Adam, The Campaign, Sink, Transgression, Meet Me at Dawn, Pops, If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You, CULT, A Southern Fairytale, STUCK and Sauna Boy. Gavin has produced and directed Lake Disappointment, Awkward Conversations With Animals I've Fucked, The Shy Manifesto, Run, Bottom, A Hundred Words For Snow, Heather, Disco Pigs, Outlier, PeterFechter: 59 Minutes, This Is Living, Bacon, One Of Them Ones, Vespertilio and Foam.

gavinroach.com
 

James Elazzi is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director recognised for championing marginalised voices through bold, emotionally charged storytelling. He received the 2024 Martin-Lysicrates Prize, the ANZ Tomorrow’s Makers Award and the 2024 Panavision Award for his short film Seeds of Gold, alongside three consecutive NSW Premier’s Literary Award nominations and multiple Sydney Theatre Award nods. In 2024, he served as Assistant Director on Holding the Man at Belvoir St Theatre. His short films Seeds of Gold and Yannis have screened internationally, with Yannis winning Best Performance at the LGBTQ+ Los Angeles Film Festival. His sold-out stage works include Saints of Damour, Karim, Son of Byblos, Lady Tabouli, Queen Fatima and Omar and Dawn. Through theatre and screen, James continues to amplify diverse Australian and Lebanese narratives.

https://www.jameselazzi.com/ 

As a creative activist, NMMWL has dedicated their career to using art as a medium of change. Nyaluak Leth (NMMWL) is an Australian raised South Sudanese, Sydney-based poet and multidisciplinary artist whose practice positions poetry as a living, embodied form. Working across installation, sound, performance, film, and public intervention, her work explores memory, ancestry, identity, and the body as a site of storytelling. Her practice moves fluidly between gallery spaces, public sites, and live performance, translating poetry beyond the page and into sensory, spatial experiences. Across each medium, poetry remains the central language guiding how audiences listen, move, and engage.

@nmmwl

Jamaican-born Sienna Brown writes historical fiction and promotes stories that centres on the Caribbean experience in Australia. Her novel Master of My Fate (2019), published by Penguin Random House, won the MUD Literary Prize at Adelaide Writers Week for the best debut novel and was shortlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize. In 2021, she was commissioned by ABC Radio National to create Caribbean Convicts in Australia. From 2022-25, she's been a Research Associate at Western Sydney University, under the auspices of the Writing & Society Research Centre as part of the ARC Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia. She presented & wrote Caribbean Echoes, a six-part series for UTS Impact Studios’ History Lab on the history of Caribbean people in Australia, co-produced with Dr. Ben Etherington, an associate professor in literatures in English at Western Sydney University. Sienna continues to write and has just completed the final draft of her second novel – Secrets of the Monkey House set in 1930’s Jamaica and Canada.

siennabrown.com.au

Tommy James Green is an award-winning playwright and actor from Gadigal country in Marrickville and the founder of theatre company Popular Playhouse. Tommy has been writing and producing original plays since 2013: at local festivals and venues including Sydney Fringe Festival (Oh My God 2014, Borderlands 2022), Flight Path Theatre (Christ Almighty 2025, Turpentine 2025), the Seymour Centre (Christ Almighty 2023) and Short+Sweet Play Festival (Scratch 2015, Kindling 2021) where he’s won a record number awards for writing, directing, acting and producing. Adept in both drama and comedy, his plays have been hailed as “bold, irreverent and joyous” (Christ Almighty, Waiting In the Wings 2025) and “muscular, evocative and packed with ideas” (Borderlands, Theatre Now 2022). You can find Tommy on Instagram @tommyjamesgreen and catch him as Padraig Skinner in the latest season of Ten Pound Poms on BBC/Stan.

His latest production Oh My God: A Comedy of Biblical Proportions is a sketch parody of the Old Testament, pitching God against the Devil in an hilarious cosmic romance-turned-rivalry. Opening October 15th at Flight Path Theatre, tickets are on sale now.
 

@popularplayhouse