Is regional arts the clumsy younger cousin of the urban cultural elite or an untapped site of cultural innovation and imagining? Poet Kelly-lee Hickey and novelist Jennifer Mills, both from Alice Springs, tell Anne Maria Nicholson about the role of regional arts in preserving and stimulating the cultural communities of remote Australia.

Jennifer Mills (Australian)
Jennifer Mills is a critically acclaimed author and poet. She was the winner of the 2008 Marian Eldridge Award for Young Emerging Women Writers, the Pacific Region of the 2008–2009 Commonwealth Short Story Competition and the 2008 Northern Territory Literary Awards: Best Short Story. Her work has appeared in ‘Hecate’, ‘Overland’, ‘Heat’, ‘Griffith Review’, ‘Best Australian Stories 2007’ and ‘New Australian Stories 2’. Jennifer spent several months hitchhiking across Australia as research for her latest novel, ‘Gone’.

Kelly-lee Hickey (Australian)
Kelly-lee Hickey, National Australian Poetry Slam champion, treads the line between “sharp and sparse” poetry (‘The Australian’) and “searing satire” (‘Adelaide Advertiser’). She has been published and has performed across Australia and Asia, blending poetry with music, performance and visual art to expose complex and layered identities. A passionate cultural development advocate, she has worked with communities in Victoria and central Australia exploring social issues through the arts. She lives and works in Alice Springs.

Anne Maria Nicholson (Australian)
Anne Maria Nicholson is a prominent journalist with the ABC, specialising in arts coverage for news and current affairs programs and the Arts Quarter for ABC 24. She is the author of two novels about volcanoes and earthquakes: 'Weeping Waters', set around the volatile Ruapehu in New Zealand, a mountain sacred to the Maori, and 'Pliny's Warning', set on the slopes of the world's most dangerous volcano, Mt Vesuvius, and the crime-ridden streets of Naples.