Jose da Costa

Born in East Timor (Timor-Leste), Jose da Costa is a teacher, writer, actor and filmmaker. He arrived in Australia aboard a refugee boat called the Tasi Diak and campaigned to raise awareness of East Timor. His writings have been published in Inside Indonesia, as part of the symposium proceedings The Santa Cruz Massacre, 1991: Thirty Years On (2023), and the Centre for Stories anthology, All of Our Selves (2025). He received a Next Chapter fellowship (2022) from The Wheeler Centre, a Hot Desk Fellowship from Centre for Stories WA (2023), and was a storyteller at the Darwin Festival (2018) and Northern Territory Writers’ Festival (2020).