Writer-in-Community

I have known June Perkins since she came to Tully, North Queensland in 2005.

I have had the fortune being able to observe June’s work as a writer and a photographer over that time.

June is a human artist. There’s a gestalt in her life and work that shows up as a calm encouragement and organizing spirit in the service of others in the their possibility as artists especially photographers and writers.

I have had the fortune of working with June on a 2007 National Writers Week poetry workshop in her local rural community of Tully; and a 2010 project designing a script writing workshop as action in social discourse that we called Out of the Box theatre.

I was thrilled to see June working as documentary maker to the 2013 Tablelands Folk Festival. While her photographic skills are undoubted, June’s photographic work at that festival was quietly unobtrusive, mostly beyond the performer’s and audience’s awareness, yet directly engaging in authentic appreciation of the performer where she needed to be.

Owen Allen, Phoenix Functions