Evelyn Araluen

Evelyn Araluen is an Australian poet and literary editor.^[1] She won the 2022 Stella Prize with her first book, Dropbear.

Early life

Araluen is an Aboriginal Australian of the Bundjalung people, born on Dharug land.^[2]

Career

Araluen's poetry has been published in The Best Australian Poems 2016, Overland, Cordite Poetry Review and Southerly and other literary journals. She contributed a chapter, "Finding Ways Home", to Anita Heiss' Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia.^[3]

In 2019 she and Jonathan Dunk were appointed co-editors of Overland, an established Australian literary journal^[4] and in November that year were joint recipients of a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund grant.^[5] She also won the inaugural Professional Development Award at the 2021 Melbourne Prize.^[6]

Her first book, Dropbear was published by the University of Queensland Press in March 2021.^[7]

Recognition and awards

After being runner-up in the 2016 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers for her poem, "Learning Bundjalung on Tharawal",^[8] she won the following year for her short story, "Muyum: a transgression".^[9] In 2017 she also won first and third prizes in the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets for "Guarded by birds" and "Dropbear poetics".^[10]

In 2018 Araluen received one of the Wheeler Centre's inaugural Next Chapter grants, providing 12 months' mentoring by Tony Birch and a three-day writing retreat at Varuna, The Writers' House.^[11][12]

Dropbear won the 2022 Stella Prize^[13][14] and was highly commended in the 2021 Anne Elder Award.^[15] It was shortlisted for the 2021 Judith Wright Calanthe Award,^[16] the 2022 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing^[17] and the 2022 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry.^[18]

References