Cassie McCullough

Thank you, Cassie, and hello.

I am.

It's called Guru Futurism, Stories of Sovereignty and Survival from Bundjalung Country, Culture and Community.

So for the creative component of that degree, I'm writing a short story collection.

So the stories are all set in the Tweed, which is where I live and where I grew up, which is on Bundjalung Country.

So they're all set on Bundjalung Country and they're all set in the future, but they're all set in a different version of the future.

So that's how they're all tied together, but also how they're different.

So all of the stories centre Bundjalung characters and community and just the way I might envision the community to be in the future, given different kind of climate concerns and

political structures and other things.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

That's a good way of looking at it.

So Guru Futurism is a place-based offspring of Indigenous Futurism, which came from Afrofuturism.

So people around, you know, from the Brisbane area to the north coast of New South Wales, we call ourselves Guris as opposed to Murris or Noongars or Kooris.

And so when I'm writing these stories, it's very much based

Oh, my heaving, groaning bookshelves.

I'm always reading a lot and, I mean, obviously I have to read a lot of kind of scholarly theory stuff for my study, but I also get to read a lot of fiction and

Yeah, lately I've been rereading some favourites.

So I reread Carpentaria by Alexis Wright.

Enormous book.

Enormous.