“My family and I moved to Geelong from Sydney in 2006 when I was nine. We lived mainly in the Corio/Norlane area. I did some of my primary schooling and all my secondary and tertiary education in Geelong – St Francis Xavier, Clonard Collage then Deakin University.” We hear from the talented Kgshak Akec.
“I’ve always been drawn to the art of storytelling, particularly in the written word – after university, I was heavily drawn into the Geelong art scene. I worked at The Pulse Radio Station as an intern, at Courthouse Youth Arts (now known as Platform Arts) and with Somebody’s Daughter Theatre Company. I’m a deep lover of reflecting on the world around you as you see and feel it in your artistic creation. In my debut novel, ‘Hopeless Kingdom’, we see the main protagonists find their way, adapt, evolve, break, and rebuild themselves in Geelong.
“I wrote Hopeless Kingdom under very strange circumstances – it was during the first nationwide lockdown of covid in March 2020, I was living at home with my mother, my father, my two younger sisters and my two younger brothers. I’d also just returned from my first solo international trip away for the first time since coming to Australia. I was having a lot of internal revelations and moments of self-discovery.
“I was 23 years old and at a time in my life where my mother and I were staring to see each other as equals. ‘Hopeless Kingdom’ is a product of all the soul-searching that had taken place in that year and all the years prior to coming to age as a young South-Sudanese woman in Geelong, in Australia.
“Recently my book was shortlisted for this year’s (2023) Miles Franklin Award. A national honour that places my book amongst some the greatest written works in Australian history. People from all walks of life, from all parts of Australia have been reaching out to me to express how moving they found the book and its characters and the journey it takes them on. It just really goes to show how a young girl from Norlane can go and achieve such amazing things.
“I proudly represent Geelong as my home wherever I go, I hope people who have connections to this place and make Geelong what it is, feel seen and represented.”
Photo supplied.
HuG 