Jared Thomas – August 11 2019

Jared is an Indigenous author, playwright, poet, and academic. He grew up in Port Augusta on Nukunu country, and his mother’s Aboriginal family came from Winton, Queensland. Jared holds a Bachelor of Arts, Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing, Masters in Creative Writing and PhD in English from the University of Adelaide. He has been a freelance journalist, film script editor, writer, and has lectured in communications, film, literature, and art at the University of South Australia. He has worked as the Manager of the Indigenous Arts and Culture Division of Arts, South Australia, and has coordinated Nukunu Peoples Council cultural heritage, language, and arts projects. His works include the play Flash Red Ford, based on his great grandfather’s struggles in the 1920s to purchase land and contend with racist attitudes and policy; Love, Land and Money, which was a response to the Alice Springs to Darwin rail extension drawing on Nukunu cultural economic and environment principles, and several short stories and poems published in anthologies. Dallas Davis the Scientist and the City Kids, part of the Oxford University Press “Yarning Strong” series, is about how a young Nukunu boy spends time on country with a scientist working to preserve a eucalypt species and through doing so, realises the depth of his cultural knowledge and its applicability in his life.

Sweet Guy
IAD Press, 2002; ISBN 9781864650501
Young adult
If Michael Sweet thought his early teens were difficult, he’s in for a shock now he’s eighteen and ready to start university. The pressures of study, making new friends and moving into a co-ed college are only the beginning. When Michael sets out to woo the girl of his dreams, it makes dealing with his drop-kick father and the antics of his madcap surfer mate Angus seem a breeze. But life is about to dish up some surprises that help Michael meet the challenges head on.

Calypso Summer
Magabala Books, 2014; ISBN 9781922142122
Young adult
After failing to secure employment in sports retail, his dream occupation, Calypso, a young Nukunu man, fresh out of high school in Rastafarian guise, finds work at the Henley Beach Health Food shop where his boss pressures him to gather native plants for natural remedies. This leads him to his Nukunu family in southern Flinders Ranges and the discovery of a world steeped in cultural knowledge. The support of a sassy, smart, young Ngadjuri girl, with a passion for cricket rivalling his own, helps Calypso reconsider his Rastafarian façade and understand how to take charge of his future.