Announcing the Inaugural Southerly Essay
Southerly is proud to announce the launch of the inaugural Southerly Essay, written by K.A Ren Wyld, entitled “Serve the tea Blak”. This essay is a conversation with, and an extended reflection on the award-winning work, Apron-Sorrow / Sovereign-Tea by Natalie Harkin (Wakefield Press, 2025). K.A Ren Wyld reflects on Natalie Harkins’ book, its representation of the history of Aboriginal women’s domestic labour and servitude, and its use of archival research to speak back to the colony and to power, through literature.
As part of Southerly‘s ongoing revival, we will publish on our website a series of essays, each focused on an Australian literary work or aspect of Australian literature. The inaugural essay was launched by Professor Elizabeth McMahon on Tuesday the 16th of June 2026, followed by a conversation between K.A Ren Wyld and Roanna Gonsalves, at a seminar hosted by the Literary Provocations Hub, School of the Arts & Media, Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture, UNSW Sydney.
K.A Ren Wyld is a writer living on the coast, south of Adelaide. Their next novel, Whichway Shimmering Dust (UQP, 2027), is a work of imagined justice for members of the Stolen Generations. Ren was the guest co-editor of Southerly 80.1, First, the Future, and contributed an essay on archival material in Aboriginal-authored fiction and poetry, titled “Novel Archival Adventurers”.
ESSAY
K.A Ren Wyld: “Serve the tea Blak” – read inline via your browser (on our website).
K.A Ren Wyld: “Serve the tea Blak” – download as a PDF to save/read later.*
* The file should download as a PDF. If nothing happens when you click the link, check your Downloads folder. Your device may have simply saved it automatically.