FRI 17 OCTOBER 2025
OPENING NIGHT AT TATHRA HOTEL from 6:30pm

OLGA MASTERS SHORT STORY AWARD WINNER ANNOUNCEMENT

Olga Masters was born in Pambula on the Far South Coast of New South Wales, the second of eight children. In 1928 the family moved to Cobargo. Olga was first published at the age of 15 in the Cobargo Chronicle, a weekly newspaper serving the south coastal area between Bega and Moruya. While she wanted to write fiction from an early age, Olga was not published as a writer of fiction until late in her life. Between 1979 and 1980, she won nine awards for her short stories.

Each year South East Arts receive over 100 short story entries responding to the theme of life in rural Australia. This year our judges will read through a diverse range of stories to make their selection.

Join judges, along with staff from South East Arts, for the announcement of the winner and runner-up of this year’s Olga Masters Short Story Award.

Omar Musa with Mariel Roberts Musa

Headland Writers Festival for a special opening night performance. Omar will perform pieces from his extensive body of work accompanied by renowned American cellist and composer Mariel Roberts Musa. Join us for this powerful and haunting performance of spoken word and live music.

Omar Musa

Omar Musa is an author, visual artist and poet from Queanbeyan, Australia. He has released two novels, three books of poetry (including Killernova), five hip-hop records, and two acclaimed plays, Since Ali Died and The Offering (with Mariel Roberts Musa). His work has appeared in The Best Australian Stories and Best of Australian Poems.   His debut novel Here Come the Dogs was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and Miles Franklin Award and he was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015. He has had several solo exhibitions of his woodcuts, including his most recent collection All My Memories Are Mistranslations. He is based between Borneo and Brooklyn.

Mariel Roberts Musa

American cellist and composer Mariel Roberts Musa is widely recognized not just for her virtuosic performances, but as a “fearless explorer” in her field (Chicago Reader). Her passion for collaboration and experimentation as an interpreter, improvisor, and composer have helped create a body of work which bridges avant-garde, contemporary, classical, improvised, and traditional music; and has established her as “one of the most adventurous figures on New York’s new music scene—one with a thorough grounding in classical tradition but a ravenous appetite for and tireless discipline in new work.” (Bandcamp). Roberts Musa has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician around the world, and is a current member of Wet Ink Ensemble and the International Contemporary Ensemble. She performs regularly on major stages for new music such as the Lincoln Center Festival (NYC), Wien Modern (Austria), Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Cervantino Festival (Mexico), Klang Festival (Denmark), Shanghai New Music Week (China), Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), and Aldeburgh Music Festival (UK). Roberts Musa has been featured on a wide variety of outstanding recordings, including titles on Innova Records, Albany Records, New World Records, New Amsterdam, Carrier Records, New Focus, and Urtext Records.