Maxine Beneba Clarke Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Memoirist and poet Maxine Beneba Clarke discusses her first book of short stories, Foreign Soil, which swept the Australian book awards when first published in 2015, and is now available in the USA.

Maxine Beneba Clarke came to fiction through poetry, both written and spoken word. She was born in Australia to a Jamaican father and Guyanese mother. Her parents immigrated to the UK before settling in Australia. Her books include a memoir, The Hate Race; a children's book, The Patchwork Bike; and the poetry collections Carrying the World, Gil Scott Heron Is On Parole, and Nothing Here Needs Fixing. She won the 2017 Victorian Premiers Literary Award for Poetry. Foreign Soil won Literary Fiction Of the Year, Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) 2015, Debut Fiction, Indie Book Awards 2015, and the Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award 2013. The Sydney Moring Herald named her Best Young Novelist of the Year 2015.

Naomi Benaron is a fiction writer, poet, and social activist. She has worked extensively with the African refugee population in her community, teaches online through the Afghan Women's Writing Project, has been involved with aiding Rwandan genocide survivors and is committed to working to end genocide on a global scale. Her short story collection, Love Letters from a Fat Man, won the 2006 Sharat Chandra Prize for Fiction, and her novel, Running the Rift, won the 2010 Bellwether Prize for Fiction and was ...