Playwright Michele Lee talked writing and developing plays with novelist and emerging playwright Rajith Savanadasa on stage at Castlemaine State Festival, as part of the WrICE Writers Across Borders panel. The panel session, adeptly chaired by writer-curator Andy Butler, began with readings from Aboriginal Australian writer Ali Cobby Eckermann who shared a moving account of meeting her birth mother and father, alongside poems written in the desert. Ali recounted how winning the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize from Yale University in 2017 had given her a newfound confidence in her work and life. Han Yujoo flew in from Seoul for the festival, and was reunited with fellow WrICE writers who she had met in Indonesia in 2018. Yujoo read from her book The Impossible Fairytale and talked about childhood in South Korea, as well as playing with form. Rajith shared the process of developing a documentary play at Malthouse Theatre, and his own complex relationship with the subject matter.