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Ellen van Neerven Ellen van Neerven i(A144258 works by) (a.k.a. Ellen Van Neerven-Currie)
Born: Established: 1990 ;
Gender: Non-binary
Heritage: Aboriginal ; Dutch ; Aboriginal Mununjali / Munaldjali ; Aboriginal Bundjalung
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BiographyHistory

Writer and editor Ellen van Neerven is a descendant of the Mununjali (Yugambeh) people from Beaudesert; their father was Dutch. Ellen grew up in Brisbane, where they attended Albany Creek High School; in 2010, Van Neerven graduated with a degree in Fine Arts in Creative Writing Production. In 2011, Ellen was granted a mentorship with black & write! Indigenous Writing and Editing Project as an editing mentor, after which they were appointed as a black & write! Indigenous editor.

It was in their twenties that Van Neerven began to take writing seriously, although their love of writing began when they were six, encouraged by their grade one teacher. In 2013, Ellen won the David Unaipon Award for an Unpublished Indigenous Writer in the Queensland Literary Awards for their short-story collection Heat and Light. In addition to the Unaipon Award, the collection has won the Dobbie Award and the Indigenous Writer's Prize (NSW Premier's Literary Awards), and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the Glenda Adams Award for New Writing (NSW Premier's Literary Awards), the Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance, the Steel Rudd Award (Queensland Literary Awards), and the Prize for Indigenous Writing (Victorian Premier's Literary Awards).

Their second book, the poetry collection Comfort Food, was published in 2016, when it was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry (NSW Premier's Literary Awards). Ellen released their third book, Throat, in 2020, which was published by UQP.

Exhibitions

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Throat St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2020 18673599 2020 selected work poetry

'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 distinctive muscles and shines alight on Australia’s unreconciled past and precarious present with humour and heart. Van Neerven is unsparing in the interrogation of colonial impulse, and fiercely loyal to telling the stories that make us who we are.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2020 inaugural winner UQP Quentin Bryce Award
2021 shortlisted ASAL Awards ALS Gold Medal
2021 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Book of the Year
2021 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Multicultural NSW
2021 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
2021 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards The C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry
2020 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards Judith Wright Calanthe Award
Each City 2019 single work short story young adult
— Appears in: Kindred : 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories 2019; (p. 288-312) Flock : First Nations Stories Then and Now 2021; (p. 47-62)
2019 shortlisted Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction Young Adult Division Short Story
y separately published work icon The Big Black Thing : Chapter 2 Milperra : Sweatshop , 2018 15304027 2018 anthology poetry prose

'The Big Black Thing: Chapter. 2 is the second issue in a new series of prose and poetry by emerging and established writers from Indigenous, migrant and refugee backgrounds.'  (Publication summary)

2019 shortlisted Mascara Avant-garde Awards Anthology
Last amended 15 Nov 2021 13:01:54
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