Maxine Beneba Clarke


Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent, whose work includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Her collection of short stories Foreign Soil won the 2013 Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award, the 2015 ABIA for Best Literary Fiction, the 2015 Indie Award for Best Debut Fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2015 Stella Prize. Her memoir The Hate Race won the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award, and her poetry collection Carrying The World won the 2017 Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry. Her picture book The Patchwork Bike, illustrated by Melbourne artist Van Thanh Rudd, won the Crichton Award for Children's Book Illustration. Clarke is a contributor to The Saturday Paper, and is included in the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.

Biography

Maxine Beneba Clarke was born and raised in the Sydney suburb of Kellyville. Her mother was an actress of Guyanese heritage and her father an academic of Jamaican descent, who migrated to Australia from England in 1976. She has said: "Cousins, aunts, and uncles of mine have settled all over the world: including in Germany, America, Switzerland, Australia, England, and Barbados. Mine is a complex migration history that spans four continents and many hundreds of years: a history that involves loss of land, loss of agency, loss of language, and loss, transformation, and reclamation of culture."
Beneba Clarke attended school in Kellyville and Baulkham Hills, before going on to earn a Bachelor of Creative Arts and Law degree from the University of Wollongong. She moved to Melbourne.

Recognition

Clarke has received several writing awards and fellowships, including:
Clarke's works include:
As editor