3 November 2022

Welcoming our new Creative Producer Hasib Hourani

Express Media are incredibly excited to announce that Hasib Hourani has been appointed our new Creative Producer as we close of the 2022 year! 

Hasib Hourani is a Lebanese-Palestinian writer, editor, arts worker, and educator. He has been writing and publishing work since 2019. He is a 2020 recipient of The Wheeler Centre’s Next Chapter scheme and his 2021 essay, ‘when we blink’, was shortlisted for The LIMINAL & Pantera Press Nonfiction Prize and is published in their 2022 anthology, Against DisappearanceHasib was awarded the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund in 2022 and has been a fellow at the Varuna National Writers House in 2021 and 2022. He has taught workshops on poetry and nonfiction through Express Media, Writers Victoria, and Dandenong Libraries, among others. He was Online Editor at The Lifted Brow between 2019 and 2020, and Online Editor at Voiceworks between 2020 and 2021. Hasib is currently completing his debut publication, a book of poetry about suffocation and the occupation of Palestine – excerpts of which have been published in Australian Poetry and Cordite Poetry ReviewIn the meantime, you can find his work in MeanjinOverland, and Going Down Swinging, among others.

We are incredibly thrilled to have Hasib joining the team and sat down with him for a little Q&A sesh to learn more!

 

What part about being Express Media’s Creative Producer are you most excited about?

I’ve been involved in Express Media in one way or another since 2019. My first essay was published in Voiceworks, and I later went on to join EdComm until eventually aging out. I presented at NEWS in 2020 (which was, I think, my first time participating in any kind of Festival). I facilitated Left to Write in 2021, and Toolkits in 2022. I’ve been a reader for some of the prizes run by Express. A lot of my accolades today are through Express Media, and I owe a lot of my career to their support and opportunities. Being a Creative Producer for Express, I couldn’t be more familiar with the programs, but it’s mind-blowing to do it all from a different perspective. It’s completely new and also not. I’m excited to be on the other side now, rolling out infrastructure for young and early-career writers to excel in this space.

Are you a writer/artist/editor yourself? What do you like to create, and what do you like to read?

I’m a writer. I’m an editor too, but that’s not as active at the moment. I write poetry and essays, and a little bit of criticism. But I read fiction and comics more than anything else. I think because they’re both genres I don’t write, they still feel quite leisurely. I can spend hours reading fiction or comics back-to-back but often tucker myself out with an essay collection because no matter how hard I try not to, I’m still reading analytically to learn more about the craft.

Any advice to young arts workers wanting to apply for positions like being a Creative Producer in the future?

Participate in programs built for you, sign up for workshops, attend Festivals. This is great for familiarising yourself with the processes, or even picking up on gaps in the industry that you may want to change. And on top of that, it gets you meeting people and putting faces to names, it gives you tangible reference points so that if you ever want to apply for a role you a) have experiences to talk about and b) may even be familiar to the person reading your application.

 

We’re excited to be working with Hasib and end 2022 with a BANG!