Ellen van Neerven – July 5 2020

Blak History – July

Seeks to promote, celebrate and remember the history of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

Photo: Bridget Wood

Ellen is an award-winning writer and proud Mununjali woman from the Yugambeh language group of South East Queensland. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Griffith Review, Meanjin, Overland and Review of Australian Fiction. Ellen has been a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist, and in 2015 she received the Express Media Award for Outstanding Contribution by a Young Person in Literary Arts for her work as editor, mentor and advocate for First Nations writers. Ellen has been Managing Editor of black&write! Indigenous Writing and Editing Project at the State Library of Queensland and a Nakata Brophy writer-in-resident at Trinity College, University of Melbourne. She has been invited to give talks and perform her work in Canada, the USA, India, Indonesia, The Philippines and across Australia. Ellen’s other work includes the short story collection Heat and Light and she has edited three anthologies, Writing Black: New Indigenous Writing from Australia, Joiner Bay and Other Stories, and Homeland calling: words from a new generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices.

Throat
University of Queensland Press, 2020; ISBN 99780702262913
I am not aware of my power
you watch me build my weapon
Throat is the explosive second poetry collection from award-winning Mununjali Yugambeh writer Ellen van Neerven. Exploring love, language and land, van Neerven flexes their muscles and shines a light on Australia’s unreconciled past and precarious present with humour and heart. Unsparing in its interrogation of colonial impulse, this book is fiercely loyal to voicing our truth and telling the stories that make us who we are.

Comfort Food
University of Queensland Press, 2016; ISBN 9780702254055
Following on from the success of her award-winning fiction debut, Heat and Light, Ellen van Neerven announces herself as a talented poet with this assured collection. Moving between places and cultures, Comfort Food explores identity, sovereignty and the restless quest for love. Using food as her inspiration, van Neerven offers a cross-cultural vision of the exotic and the familiar. This sensuous volume sets a new benchmark in contemporary Australian poetry.
“Ellen van Neerven is the real deal. This is nourishing, soulful tucker for the here and now.” – Omar Musa