Talk

Be what you can’t see: one writer’s journey | Maxine Beneba Clarke

Maxine Beneba Clarke

TEDxSydney 2019 · 24 May 2019

African diaspora Australian writing was non-existent when Maxine Beneba Clarke was growing up there in the 80’s and 90’s. This is the story of how she came to be what she couldn’t see.

Maxine Beneba Clarke’s short fiction collection Foreign Soil won the ABIA for Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2015, and the 2015 Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction.

Maxine has published three poetry collections including Carrying the World, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry 2017 and was shortlisted for the Colin Roderick Award. The Hate Race, a memoir about growing up black in Australia won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award Multicultural NSW Award 2017. The Patchwork Bike, Maxine’s first picture book with Van T. Rudd, was a CBCA Honour Book for 2017. She writes for The Saturday Paper.