Cindy Sukhjit Shirley Rashida
We are excited to offer 4 mentorships for TWC members in 2026. Our Mentor Register is published below and we encourage you to check it out. We will add more mentors as the year progresses. In keeping with TWC ethos, our mentors offer their expertise at well below official mentoring rates. As published award winning writers, poets, storytellers and performers, they bring a wealth of intellectual, emotional and cultural knowledge to the process. The Collective runs on love, fresh air and goodwill, but we cannot pay mentors if we don’t charge for the service. And we refuse to ask writers to work gratis. This program will run on a mentee pays basis. One free mentorship is offered every year to an emerging First Nations writer. If a grant application is successful, we will add more free places during the year. In the meantime, we are thrilled to present our first four mentors.
Dr Cindy Solonec is a Nyikina woman from the Western Kimberley. Her PhD thesis was the catalyst for Debesa: The Story of Frank and Katie Rodriguez, a West Kimberley social history set during the mid-1900s and based on her parents and extended family. Debesa was shortlisted for the Royal WA Historical Society History Prize in 2021 and the WA Premiers Book Awards in 2022. Her fiction, memoir and poetry are published in literary journals and anthologies. She has run memoir writing workshops and mentored emerging writers during her time as Elder-In-Residence at the Centre for Stories. Retired from lecturing in Aboriginal studies, Cindy is Patron of The Writers Collective, a member of the Centre for Stories Aboriginal Advisory Group; and a member of Wadjak Northside Elders. She enjoys dabbling in short stories, travel and family time.
Sukhjit Kaur Khalsa OAM is a Boorloo-based writer, performer, producer and cultural leader whose work has redefined contemporary Australian storytelling. Across the past decade, her multi-form practice has earned recognition from the Performing Arts WA Awards (2020), Mona Brand Writing Awards (2022), WA Multicultural Awards (2022) and the Australian Sikh Awards (2023). Sukhjit is alumni of Impact Australia (2020), where she and her partner, Perun Bonser, developed their rom-com series One of the Good Ones. She is also alumni of the Theatre Producers of Colour Broadway program (2023) and the Creative Australia Leadership program (2024–2025). A former storytelling trainer at the Centre for Stories (2018–23), she released her debut hip-hop single Collectables (2023). Her debut narrative non-fiction book is called Fully Sikh: hot chips and turmeric stains and is available now from Upswell Publishing. Sukhjit is currently the CEO of The Blue Room Theatre.
Shirley Marr (馬雪莉) is an internationally published and multi-award-winning author of children’s and young adult fiction. As a first-generation Chinese-Australian living in sunny Perth, she describes herself as having a Western mind and an Eastern heart, writing in the middle where both collide. Her Middle Grade novel, A Glasshouse of Stars was the winner of the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book of the Year for Younger Readers 2022, the WA Premiers Book Awards for Writing for Children 2022, and nominated for many more. Her other titles include All Four Quarters of the Moon and Countdown to Yesterday. Her latest offering is the picture book One Day, a philosophical rumination on joy, optimism and living life to the fullest for the youngest of minds. Shirley’s passion is to distil her cultural heritage in authentic and magical ways through the lens of resilient children and youth while championing diversity and representation.
Dr Rashida Murphy is the founder of The Writers’ Collective, an author, poet and mentor. In the last ten years she has published more than fifty short stories, poems and creative non-fiction in literary journals and anthologies internationally and in Australia. She is also the author of a novel (The Historian’s Daughter), a collection of short stories (The Bonesetter’s Fee), and a novella (Old Ghosts) forthcoming in 2026. Her work has been shortlisted in the Dundee International Book Prize, the Carmel Bird Literary Award, and the NSW Premier’s Literature Awards. Most recently she won the Double Take Novelette Award as well as the AAWP Life Writing Award. As a mentor she has supported and encouraged several emerging writers, all of whom have since been published. She convened the inaugural Perth Storyfest, a successful writers’ festival, in April 2025.
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start listening.
