Manal Younus
Manal Younus is an Australian based freelance storyteller from Eritrea who believes that language and stories are the very fabric of our existence. Using her writing and performance , Manal explores different aspects of life from perseverance, identity, travel and truth. She speaks on a vast number of issues including youth leadership, gender and female empowerment, faith, blackness, culture, language, migration, displacement, racism and interculturalism. The young artist also facilitates writing, performance, public speaking, youth empowerment and intercultural awareness workshops in schools, community groups and professional environments to encourage others to develop their own voices.
Since making the Australian Poetry Slam National Finals in 2013, Manal no longer competes in slams but has gone on to perform around the country including at The Sydney Opera House. In 2015, Manal released her first book of poetry called Reap and launched it with a national tour with official launches in Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth and feature performances in Queensland and New South Wales. In 2016, Manal represented Australia at the Georgetown Literary Festival in Penang, Malaysia. Now, Manal travels frequently around the country to perform and facilitate workshops for schools in each state and territory, as well as to perform and speak at public events and conferences with a range of different audiences.
In 2015 Manal founded Soul Lounge, a monthly open mic night that centres the voices of people of colour. As the director of soul lounge 18 months, before passing the project on to a new volunteer, Manal was responsible for programming, budgeting and sustaining a culturally inclusive art space that fostered development of local Artists in Adelaide. She has continued to lend her expertise on creating culturally inclusive spaces and events to to various organisation since.
Manal has featured on ABC's QandA, presented at the Adelaide TEDx Conference in 2016, the National Multicultural Women's Conference of 2016, the Adelaide Festival of Ideas and Open State Festival, the Halogen Foundation's Young Leaders Convention, The Council for International Schools Conference 2017 and James Cook University's Young Language Ambassadors Conference of 2018, just to name a few favourites.