“It’s actually really easy for me to joke about colonisation because it is absurd. Racism is absurd. Sexism, homophobia and transphobia is absurd … and I’m trying to call it out and remind us of what’s real.”
Ellen van Neerven (they/them) is an award-winning author, editor and educator of Mununjali (Yugambeh language group) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, and non-fiction on unceded Turrbal and Yuggera land. van Neerven’s first book, Heat and Light (UQP, 2014), a novel-in-stories, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. van Neerven’s poetry collection Comfort Food (UQP, 2016) won the Tina Kane Emergent Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize. Throat (UQP, 2020), the recipient of Book of the Year, the Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Multicultural Award at 2021 NSW Literary Awards and the inaugural Quentin Bryce Award, is now available.
Purchase their latest book, Throat.