In Place / In Practice: Author Shannon Barnes on how she found her creative voice
1/7/26
My friends often tell me they’re ‘not talented enough’ to be artists, and every time they do, I tell them that it isn’t true. I believe that no one is born with an innate natural talent that makes being a career artist inevitable. Talent helps, sure. But really what is needed to turn your creative instincts into a successful career is a lot of hard work, a willingness to learn and, perhaps most importantly, a belief that it is actually possible for you.
There is a lot of privilege involved in developing this belief. People who grow up to be artists were usually exposed to the creative scene as children and have time and financial resources to invest in their skill development. If you are separated from these opportunities by distance (as many regional kids are), or other life circumstances, even the most creative person may never get the chance to truly pursue a creative vocation.
For Ngiyampaa writer, Shannon Barnes, this was her experience for most of her professional life so far. But with the encouragement of her family and community, she was able to overcome the barriers to self-confidence that she faced. And now as the winner of the inaugural Bundyi Writing Prize, she wants to pass that encouragement on to others because, in her words, “Every person’s wellbeing would benefit from having support to recognise their own creative gift.”
Shannon is more commonly known as the founder of Boomalli Consulting. Their primary work includes facilitation, reconciliation strategy development, cultural training and design. It began 17 years ago out of necessity. Shannon moved to Dubbo, on Tubba-Gah Wiradjuri Country, for a job with Aboriginal Affairs, with her four children and no financial security. When the funding for her role ran out, she was left with no income and four kids to support on her own. She was lucky to receive an offer from another department to continue work as a consultant.
She said, “I took that first contract out of desperation. But to do that, I had to sell the only asset that I owned, which was the car, so I could pay for the insurances, get a laptop and a printer and start the business. And that’s how Boomalli started and why it started, because I had four little eyes looking at me going, what are we doing now, mum?”
Shannon continued to build her business, with this vision statement at the centre:
“In honour of our Mothers and Fathers who fought for the rights & privileges we enjoy today; we pay tribute to their struggle & sacrifice and pledge to continue the fight in their name.” (Read more: www.boomalliconsulting.com.au)
A lot of the work they do helps Australians understand First Nations governance structures, Traditional Owners, Land Council(s) and Community Working Parties. She has also sought to separate culture from First Nations political history, to create a space for cultural exchange and help all Australians feel connected to our country’s rich history.
“We wanted to teach people and expose people to our culture because if you haven’t had access to its beauty, how do you love that? And if you don’t love it and have an emotional attachment to it, you’re not going to want to preserve that and keep that intact as much as we do, and we need our allies. It was about that exposure within limitations, so it was still respectful to lore. It was also important because I had my children that had to continue their cultural education.”
Shannon Barnes, Founder of Boomalli Consulting and author of Strangelands. Photographer: Alicia May Photography.
Shannon had her first opportunity to flex her creative muscles in 2019 when a fellow from the Albuquerque Bio Park (a zoo, aquarium and botanic garden in New Mexico, USA) called Dr Baird Fleming emailed her out of the blue. He had seen her business’ design work and wanted her to provide feedback on their upcoming Australian exhibition.
After engaging via email initially, Dr Fleming flew Shannon and her family to Albuquerque in New Mexico to continue working on the design. Over the next five years, the Executive Committee and Shannon designed an exhibit that included 27 cultural practitioners across 9 clan groups and included a revolutionary repatriation clause that means any tangible contribution that is deinstalled can be returned home or placed in guardianship with an entity of Boomalli’s discretion. It was this experience that prompted her to consider herself not just as a business-person, but as a creative.
“For the first time ever, I wrote the creative component of the exhibit from beginning to end, contributed still images and gave co-design support to all elements of the display. I always thought I was the business cogs behind our work. I never thought that I was the actual creative person until that happened.”
With encouragement and support from her cousin and respected author, Gayle Kennedy, she eventually submitted her first piece of writing to the Voices of Women, International Short Film & Script Festival, and ended up winning Best Short Monologue First Nations Writer for her piece, Unfaithfully Yours.
Shannon’s love for her family, particularly her children, has always been one of her driving forces. Throughout her life, her desire to care for their physical and cultural wellbeing has been her priority. But this self-sacrifice did pose a barrier to her pursuit of her creative life too, leaving little room for her individual identity outside of being a daughter, mother or business owner. This changed on her 50th birthday. To celebrate this milestone, she gifted herself a trip to Europe and on the top of the Eiffel Tower, she made a commitment to write a book for herself.
“We were all just staring out at all the Paris lights and thinking how beautiful it was. It wasn’t so much the setting, but the space to not be Boomalli, to not be mum, to not be the daughter, to just be me. I never imagined I would ever be able to do this as a single mother, ever. I asked myself, ‘What was the one thing that I wanted to gift myself?’ And I made a decision then that I would write a book.”
Shannon took time off from her business to write her debut novel, Strangelands, saying, “I just wrote like a lunatic day and night, and it consumed me.”
The process was an enriching one, helping her understand how her children feel when engaging in their own creative practice.
“Two of my sons are carvers, and one is a narrator through optic. And Naarah, my daughter, is a dancer. For the first time I understood what they felt when they created and how the world shuts away. It’s like trying to describe the feeling of how you’re attached to your ancestral homelands, even though you’ve never physically lived there. It’s like this magnet is drawing you in. I would think, how does my son see from that piece of wood that artefact fits that to carve? How does my son see the result of that artwork when he hasn’t even put a brushstroke down? How does my daughter know what the choreography is going to look like? But now I do. I know what the end of the story looks like and I’m not there yet.”
The Bundyi Prize announcement at the Brisbane Writers Festival 2025. Winner Shannon Barnes with Publisher at Large of the Bundyi Imprint, Dr Anita Heiss. Photo by Bianca Valentino.
She sent a chapter to a couple of people in the industry and they encouraged her to enter it into the Bundyi Prize. This prize was established last year as a part of Simon & Schuster’s Bundyi Imprint, which focuses on cultivating First Nations talent in the industry by publishing First Nations authors, edited and designed by First Nations people. It is led by Dr Anita Heiss and is named after the Wiradyuri word, ‘Bundyi’, meaning ‘to share with me’.
At first, Shannon was hesitant to enter the prize, but in the end she submitted her manuscript because of the unwavering support of her network.
“The literary space showed its colours to me almost immediately. Complete strangers became not just friends but family, offering their time, advice and support with such generosity. One of those people was Lou Johnson, who’s now my agent. The strong representation of women in this space was encouraging from the beginning and nothing short of inspirational. It’s true, a space is easier to stay in when you can see yourself there. I admire the women who walked this path before me, not only for beating it down, but for opening the gate when I arrived.”
The judging panel, consisting of Dr Anita Heiss (Publisher At Large), Ben Ball (Publishing Director, S&S) and Bianca Valentino (consultant editor), selected Strangelands as the winner.
Heiss said, “Strangelands is a gripping read from the first page, and the blending of genres – combining stark realism with hints of the supernatural – give the novel a unique place within Australian literature. Finding new voices and filling gaps in the literary landscape is exactly what we want to be doing with Bundyi as a First Nations imprint, and the reason we have also acquired the world rights to the Strangelands, which will be published in early 2027.’
In response to her win, Shannon said, “I am deeply thankful to Dr Anita Heiss, whose belief in my manuscript will bring Strangelands into the world. When awarding the inaugural Bundyi Prize, she said she hoped future submissions would ‘uncover someone as gifted as Shannon Barnes,’ an honour I carry with great humility. Anita is a force in Australian literature and someone I have long admired.”
This experience has also left her with a strong desire to encourage other creatives to take a chance and share their work, particularly other First Nations authors. Entries for the 2026 Bundyi Prize are now open, and she would love to see more unknown writers submit their manuscripts.
“There’s writers everywhere and their work sits on a computer like it did for me for years. And I just want to encourage everyone to share it because you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Shannon has faced an unusually significant number of barriers as a creative. On top of being a First Nations person and a single mother, she grew up regionally, which limited her understanding of what was possible.
“Growing up in a small bush town, I didn’t know the opportunities that existed in the arts. My environment didn’t encourage me to look for what I couldn’t see. Had I lived somewhere where the arts were more visible, valued, or accessible, I think my pathway would have looked very different. I do think creatives are disadvantaged by location. Not because they lack ability, but because the systems around them don’t nurture what they can become.”
Shannon has been blessed by family, friends and professional connections that have inspired and encouraged her to see what is possible for her. Without these people she may have never realised her creative potential. She recognises this and wants to pass on this support to others.
“I genuinely believe every person’s wellbeing would benefit from having support to recognise their own creative gift. Creativity slows the pace of the world. It gives the mind room to breathe, to imagine, to settle. Everyone deserves access to that.”
At Regional Arts NSW, we have been fighting for equal access to the arts for regional NSW for 80 years. In the words of Robert Garran, friend of our Founder Dorothy Helmrich, in 1945, “[Regional Arts NSW*] is based on the belief that art in the wider sense of the world is not a luxury for the few, but a necessity for all in a community which aims to develop to the full all the faculties of its citizens and so enable them to make the best of life.”
In short, every person deserves access to the arts because it provides immense benefits to their wellbeing and quality of life. And to be able to experience this, they first need to know that creativity is within their reach.
Emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writers are encouraged to submit their unpublished manuscripts to the 2026 The Bundyi Writing Prize. The Bundyi Writing prize winner will receive a cash prize of AUD$10,000 sponsored by Simon & Schuster Australia and includes manuscript development with a First Nations editor.
Entries are now open and close on Monday 31 August 2026.
Learn more: www.simonandschuster.com.au/p/BundyiAUPrize
Strangelands is a multi‑generational literary fiction novel set on Ngiyampaa Country, following the Yawatyal‑Harris family as they move through grief, kinship, silence, and the spiritual undercurrents that shape their lives. The story spans decades and perspectives, weaving together the quiet violences of assimilation, the weight of inherited memory, and the very real contemporary impacts of trauma that still shape families today. At its core, it shows that even in the midst of all this, Country keeps calling us back – steady, patient, waiting for us to hear it again.
At its heart, Strangelands is about the fractures that run through families – and the old, patient forces that help stitch them back together. It explores the tension between what is spoken and what is carried, the way trauma echoes across generations, and the deep cultural intelligence that sits inside everyday moments. The novel moves between the living and the spiritual, the seen and the felt, without ever leaving the grounded reality of community, Country, and responsibility.
The central character, Kennedy Harris, is a woman many will recognise – a single mother who has survived hardship, raised her children with grit, sacrifice, and who has built a life through sheer determination. In her fifties, she begins to reckon with the parts of herself she has set aside, and the choices she must now make to reclaim her own path. Her journey reflects a truth many women face: that healing, self‑possession, and clarity often arrive later in life, when we finally have the courage to look inward.
The novel also shines a light on families who struggle to speak openly about trauma and why breaking that silence matters. It asks readers to consider the humanity of parents, the burdens they carried, and the empathy owed to them as family members mature and grow into their own understanding.
But beneath all of this, for me, sat a deeper narrative – a quiet, powerful “what if”: What if nothing had been stolen. What if no woman had been broken. What if our culture had been left whole.
Strangelands is the doorway into that possibility. It imagines the world our families might have lived in if the fractures had never been forced upon us – and the world we are still capable of building or have.
Strangelands will be published in early 2027. You can learn more about the book and the Bundyi Prize here.
Written by Beattrice Waller, Operations & Engagment Manager at Regional Arts NSW.
*formerly known as the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA)