We are stoked to announce our new Creative Producer, Mia Nie, who will be heading up the Express Media programs in 2023!

Mia is a Chinese-Australian comic artist, essayist, illustrator, zine-maker and award-nominated ex-poet living on unceded Wurundjeri country. In 2020, she was a recipient of the Wheeler Centre’s The Next Chapter award, and her comics have been nominated for the National Cartoonist Society’s Reuben Awards. She is currently creative producer at Express Media, and is working on her self-published serial webcomic, SAMSARA DREAMIN’.

To get to know Mia a little better, we asked her a few question about craft, the role, and her plans for Express Media heading into the future!

 

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

The power!!! It’s overwhelming!!! Finally I’ve attained the position of cultural gatekeeper I coveted for so long!!!

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

I am a comic artist! I make edgy comics for depressed transsexuals. Last year I started self-publishing my webcomic, SAMSARA DREAMIN’, an action-horror feel-bad epic I’ve been slow cooking for the last few years. It comes with a strong set of content warnings. It’s heavily inspired by edgelord manga series like Chainsaw Man and Dorohedoro. I’m on a hiatus at the moment, but will be producing more creative work soon.

Besides that, I write prose on occasion, mainly non-fiction essays. My prose is modelled on Dodie Bellamy’s and Anne Carson’s autobio/autofiction style, braiding lots of disparate themes and research preoccupations together with a tight structure. Carson and Bellamy are my favourite writers.

Most of the time I watch more movies than I read books.  I started my creative life making poetry zines. I still make zines but I’ve renounced writing poetry, although I read (and occasionally even enjoy) it to this very day.

3) What is something you hope to see from Express Media’s programming now you are at the helm?

More paid excursions for me, personally. The purpose of being a program planner is to give yourself the maximum number of paid excursions possible.

Besides that, something I’m hoping to cultivate during my tenure as Creative Producer is a richer sense of community amongst our Express Media members. I think the past few years have taught us (collectively, as a “global” “society”) valuable lessons about the role of digital communities in our lives. I view cultivating that sense of community for the participants of our development programs, like Toolkits and Parliament Express, as an integral part of the role. As a lifelong zinester I’d like to bring some of that DIY small-community-minded ethos into the job as well – particularly by working with Selina and the Voiceworks team and partnering with other youth creative arts organisations, running events and collaborations more frequently on a smaller scale. We want Express Media to be the premier community for young and emerging writers across Australia!