Sonja Dechian – June 19 2016

World Refugee Day – June 20 2015

Sonja is a writer, editor, and radio and TV producer. She is a presenter with ABC Asia Pacific and is the secretary of Australians Against Racism. She has studied science communication and holds a Masters in Creative Writing. Sonja has co-edited two collections of stories about the Australian refugee experience: Dark Dreams: Australian refugee stories and No Place Like Home: Australian stories by young writers aged 8-21 years. The second collection of stories creates a narrative picture of Australians, past and present. It is also a mosaic of journeys, for we are all displaced peoples or the descendents of displaced peoples, whether we are from Indigenous, settler, migrant or refugee families.

Dark Dreams: Australian refugee stories (Heather Millar and Eva Sallis co-editors)
Wakefield Press, 2004; ISBN 9781862546295

This is a unique anthology of essays, interviews, and stories written by children and young adults aged 11-20 years. The stories are the finest of hundreds collected through a nationwide schools competition in 2002. The essays and stories represent many different countries and themes. Some focus on survival, some on horrors, some on the experiences and alienation of a new world. This book will have a key role to play in schools across Australia.

An Astronaut’s Life
Text Publishing, 2015; ISBN 9781922147929
In sparkling prose, Sonja Dechian’s profound, moving and wry stories speak to our deepest yearning for connection and the inevitability of our isolation. From a terrorist cell of cyber-bullying victims working to annihilate the digital memory of their humiliation to a pandemic that leaves grieving parents battling for the media spotlight, these affecting tales invite us to examine our inability to control the world around us—and our own desires. An Astronaut’s Life is a beautiful debut from an intelligent new voice in Australian writing.