Cirrus@Austlit

Writer and poet, Samantha Faulkner is from the Badu and Moa Islands in the Torres Strait and the Yadhaigana and Wuthuthi/Wuthati peoples of Cape York Peninsula. She has represented women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interests on local, state and national boards and has been a Director of the ACT Torres Strait Islanders Corporation.

Faulkner began her love of writing poetry when she was a teenager. It was during the 1990s, that she received a research grant from the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies to research and document her grandfather's life story, which led to the publication of her work, Life B'long Ali Drummond : A Life in the Torres Strait in 2007. This work represented her passion to share the stories from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians with non-Indigenous Australians and the internationally community. Faulkner continues to write and has recently been an editor of By Close of Business : Us Mob Writing , and contributed to the New Zealand Maori literary journal issue, Ora Nui: A Collection of Maori and Aboriginal Literature. She has previously shared the BlackWords National Coordinator role with Dr Jeanine Leane from 2009-2010, AIATSIS. (Source: Faulkner 2014)