Evelyn Araluen

Araluen is an Aboriginal Australian of the Bundjalung people, born on Dharug land.[1]

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.

In 2019 she and Jonathan Dunk were appointed co-editors of Overland, an established Australian literary journal[2] and in November that year were joint recipients of a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund grant.[3] She also won the inaugural Professional Development Award at the 2021 Melbourne Prize.[4]

Her first book, Dropbear was published by the University of Queensland Press in March 2021.[5]

After being runner-up in the 2016 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers for her poem, "Learning Bundjalung on Tharawal",[6] she won the following year for her short story, "Muyum: a transgression".[7] 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".[8]

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.[9][10]

Dropbear won the 2022 Stella Prize[11][12] and was highly commended in the 2021 Anne Elder Award.[13] It was shortlisted for the 2021 Judith Wright Calanthe Award,[14] the 2022 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing[15] and the 2022 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry.[16]