The Cherry Picker's Daughter

National Library of Australia

Kerry Reed-Gilbert, Wiradjuri woman, writer, artist and activist, passed away on July 2019 shortly before her memoir and final piece of writing was published. Fellow writers and activists, Yvette Holt and Samantha Falkner, joined us to pay their respects to Aunty Kerry. Reflecting on and celebrating her life and writing, they spoke to Kerry’s latest and final piece of work The Cherry Picker’s Daughter. The Cherry Picker’s Daughter explores Kerry’s story of love and loss, repeated dislocation, dispossession and the impact of life as an Aboriginal state ward living under the terror of Protection laws. During her childhood, fruit-picking meant the difference between going hungry or having a roof over your head. Kerry’s final piece of writing encompasses her early life, leading us through memories of losing her mother, her father imprisoned for her the murder of her mother, and the vital strength of family ties in Aboriginal communities while surviving the White Australia Policy and everyday racism. Kerry Reed-Gilbert was a Wiradjuri woman, writer, artist and activist and the inaugural Chairperson of the First Nations Australia Writers Network (FNAWN). She was a member of the ACT Us Mob Writing (UMW) group and was FNAWN co-editor for the Ora Nui Journal collaboration between First Nations Australia writers and Maori writers. Kerry conducted writing workshops nationally and internationally and her poetry and prose have been published in many journals and anthologies internationally. Yvette Henry Holt is a national multi-award-winning poet, academic, serial photographer and habitual hiker, heralding from the Yiman, Wakaman and Bidjara Nations’ of Queensland. Her poetry has been widely published, translated and anthologised in both in print and online. In 2005 Yvette was awarded the Queensland Premier’s David Unaipon Award for her manuscript, anonymous premonition (UQP), the Victorian Premier’s Literary for Indigenous Writing in 2008, Scanlon Poetry Prize NSW 2008, Kate Challis RAKA Award 2010. Samantha Falkner is the current Chairperson for US Mob Writing Group of which Kerry was a member. Samantha is a Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal woman from the Wuthuthi / Yadhaigana peoples, Cape York Peninsula and Badu and Moa Islands, Torres Strait. She is the author of Life Blong Ali Drummond: A Life in the Torres Strait, published in 2007 by Aboriginal Studies Press. She has performed at several festivals and conferences and has had poetry and prose published: locally and nationally.