Short Bio
Sita Rose Bennett is a Nordic-Australian author and actress who was raised on the coast of Margaret River, W.A, and started acting in theatre, appearing in her first film at a young age. Since studying acting and writing, then disappearing into a Zen/Buddhist monastery for a few years, she has published a series of fantasy books, worked in film and television, and co-created several award-winning art-house films with her brother, director/cinematographer Mana Bennett, which have screened internationally.
She has been accepted into several international writing residencies, including the Westfjords Artist Residency and Gröndal‘s House Iceland, where she wrote ‘A Silent Witness’ a short story and poem published in issue seven of Ós Pressan — the Icelandic literary Journal.
I was shaped by silence before I found words. Language is a peculiar thing to wrestle with when the most interesting fields of exploration live in the liminal spaces, the spaces in-between, the spaces that evade linguistic reach.
For a long time, I disappeared into the exile of illness, into the sanctuary of ancient wisdom, into an uninvited oblivion imposed by pain. Pain that could not be defeated by grit or optimism alone, pain which instilled a deep reverence for life in the sentience of our impermanence, and pressed me into a place where words & stories became my refuge.
I followed them the way a displaced wanderer follows the scent of water in the desert.
Storytelling can be many things, but for me, it is a bridge between us and the abstract. A bridge I have not yet succeeded to cross, but attempt to with each new work, and welcome fellow wanderers with me on the quest for something abstractly true.
“If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the kingdom” — The Gospel of Thomas, Verse 28
A Personal Note
As sure as the earth orbits the sun,
and ocean tides rise and fall with the moon,
all things are transient.