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Alison Whittaker Alison Whittaker i(8637549 works by)
Gender: Female
Heritage: Aboriginal ; Aboriginal Kamilaroi
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BiographyHistory

Poet and essayist Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi woman from Gunnedah and Tamworth, North-western New South Wales. She worked in media law and Aboriginal women's law and policy. In 2017-2018, she was a Fulbright scholar at Harvard Law School, where she was named the Dean’s Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law. Alison was also the 2018 Indigenous Poet-in-Residence for the Queensland Poetry Festival.

Exhibitions

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Blakwork Broome : Magabala Books , 2018 14069202 2018 selected work poetry

'A stunning mix of memoir, reportage, fiction, satire, and critique composed by a powerful new voice in poetry. Alison Whittaker’s BLAKWORK is an original and unapologetic collection from which two things emerge; an incomprehensible loss, and the poet’s fearless examination of the present.

'Whittaker is unsparing in the interrogation of familiar ideas – identifying and dissolving them with idiosyncratic imagery, layering them to form new connections, and reinterpreting what we know.' (Publication summary)

2020 shortlisted Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature John Bray Poetry Award
2019 winner Queensland Literary Awards Judith Wright Calanthe Award
2019 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards Poetry
2019 highly commended Australian Centre Literary Awards Wesley Michel Wright Prize in Poetry
2019 longlisted ASAL Awards ALS Gold Medal
2019 winner Mascara Avant-garde Awards Poetry
2019 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Small Publishers' Adult Book of the Year
2019 highly commended Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Prize for Poetry
2019 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Prize for Indigenous Writing
Many Girls White Linen i "no mist no mystery", 2017 single work poetry
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 226 2017; (p. 29-30) Fire Front : First Nations Poetry and Power Today 2020; (p. 55-56)
Judges Report : In Alison Whittaker’s ‘MANY GIRLS WHITE LINEN’, which placed equal first, the plight of First Nations peoples is front and centre. Through its torsional rhymes and rhythms, the poem eviscerates the iconic whiteness of Picnic at Hanging Rock and stuns with its own iconic imagery: ‘amongst gums collecting grit / where blak girls hang / nails’. The poem is, to quote Whittaker, ‘raw rousing horrifying’.
2016 joint winner The Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize
y separately published work icon Lemons in the Chicken Wire Broome : Magabala Books , 2016 9148827 2016 selected work poetry

'Winner 2015 black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship – a partnership between the State Library of Queensland’s black&write! Indigenous Writing and Editing Project and Magabala Books.'

'From a remarkable new voice in Indigenous writing comes this highly original collection of poems bristling with stunning imagery and gritty textures. At times sensual, always potent, Lemons in the Chicken Wire delivers a collage of work that reflects rural identity through a rich medley of techniques and forms.'

'It is an audacious, lyrical and linguistically lemon flavoured poetry debut that possesses a rare edginess and seeks to challenge our imagination beyond the ordinary. Alison Whittaker demonstrates that borders, whether physical or imagined, are no match for our capacity for love.' (Source: Newsouth Books website)

2015 joint winner black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowships For unpublished manuscript.
2017 shortlisted ASAL Awards Mary Gilmore Award for a First Book of Poetry
2016 shortlisted Scanlon Prize for Poetry
Last amended 15 Sep 2021 11:18:31
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