Meet the Toolkits: Poetry 2026 Participants
It’s time to meet the Toolkits: Poetry participants for 2026!
Facilitated for the second year by Lou Garcia-Dolnik, Toolkits: Poetry is a practical developmental program supporting writers under 30 as they explore their poetry practice.
A very warm welcome to this year’s cohort! Read about them below:
Tooba Anwar
Tooba Anwar (she/they) is a teacher in training, living on Wangal land. A proud member of Teachers for Palestine NSW, baby flautist, emerging juice chef, avid bike rider and sometimes sharing stories on race matters. <3_<3
Alisha Brown
Alisha Brown (she/her) is a poet living on unceded Gadigal Country. Her debut manuscript, A Bird is a Small God, was shortlisted for the 2026 Dorothy Hewett Award. She won the 2025 Finding Beauty Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the 2026 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, and her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. You can find her work in Best of Australian Poems, Palette Poetry, Westerly, Griffith Review, Island, Cordite, and Meanjin, among others.
Senuri Chandrani
Senuri Chandrani (they/she) is an actor and writer based on Gadigal Country. Most recently, she led the film Mad Rush, which premiered at MIFF this August. As she discovers her voice as a writer, she draws on her performance practice of deep listening and embodying others' words.
August Graham
August Graham (they/them) is a poet and musician living and working across Gadigal and Bidjigal land. They make songs with their partner as ‘knock knock’. Their work has been published in UNSWeetened Literary Journal.
Nadia Lazich Harari
Nadia Lazich Harari is an emerging writer and editor based on unceded Wurundjeri Country. Writing as a way to explore the braiding of environment with self, you can read a poem of theirs, if you wish, at Cordite Poetry Review. They have edited for both Voiceworks and Visible Ink magazines.
IG: @nahahhahha
Antoinette Luu
Antoinette Luu (she/her) is a Vietnamese-Australian writer practising in south-west Sydney. Her poetry reconciles life in the diaspora, and how this life is at once burgeoning, threatened, loving, complicit and lived on unceded Darug land. Antoinette is a Projects Officer at the Bankstown Poetry Slam and is a four-time finalist for their National Youth Poetry Slam.
Nicole Moore
Nicole Moore (she/they) is a psychologist and writer based in Naarm. Her work has been published in Meanjin, Cordite Poetry Review, Rabbit, Best of Australian Poetry 2022 and Voiceworks.
Mia Thomson
Mia Thomson (she/her) is an emerging writer of creative non-fiction and poetry, living and working on Wurundjeri Country. She is a graduating Honours student of the Creative Writing program at The University of Melbourne, where she has spent the last year researching the stickiness between poetic fragmentation, queer theory and plastic materials.
Hà Lâm Tô
Hà Lâm Tô (chị/em/they/she) believes in the power of skillful, honest and compassionate language to repair, amend and inspire. Hà has worked as an artist, writer, simultaneous interpreter, movement instructor, mindfulness practitioner and peacemaking activist across the intersections of race, health, community, environment, LGBTIQA+ and disability awareness. Hà is a member of the Việt diaspora in Naarm, and has spent their upbringing between Ngunnawal Country, Tkoronto, Berlin and Hà Nội.
Nikki Wong
Nikki Wong (she/her) is a writer based on Wurundjeri land, currently completing her Masters of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing at the University of Melbourne.
Her writing has been published in TEXT journal. She often explores displacement, identity and the creative process in her fiction and poetry.
About the facilitator:
Lou Garcia-Dolnik is a poet living and working on sovereign Gadigal-Wangal lands. Their work has been awarded Second Prize in Overland’s Judith Wright Poetry Prize, a place on the shortlist for the Blake Prize, Val Vallis Awards, LIMINAL Non-Fiction Prize, the Kat Muscat Fellowship, and an Academy of American Poets University Prize from the University of Texas at Austin. An alumnus of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s Emerging Writers Intensive, Lou was the 2023 recipient of the Australian Poetry/NAHR Eco-Poetry Fellowship and attended Tin House’s Summer Workshop in the poetry faculty. They are a 2026 Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellow.
Interested in participating in Toolkits? An annual Express Media membership lets you access our full range of programs. You’ll also receive regular updates from us, including news about upcoming Toolkits streams.
Toolkits is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund. Toolkits: Poetry is presented alongside Australian Poetry.