Born
in 1962, Alison Croggon writes in many genres, including criticism,
theatre and prose. She runs the theatre blog Theatre Notes
(theatrenotes.blogspot.com)
and is the
Melbourne
theatre reviewer for The Australian.
Her
poetry has been published widely in anthologies and magazines in
Australia
and overseas. Her most recent collection, Theatre,
was published by Salt last year. Attempts
at Being (Salt Publishing 2003) was shortlisted for the Kenneth
Slessor Poetry Prize in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and nominated
for a Pushcart Prize in the
US
. This is the Stone (Penguin
Books 1991) won the Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmore Prizes and The Blue Gate (Black Pepper Press 1997) was shortlisted for the
Victorian Premier's Poetry Prize.
Alisonšs
writing for performance includes the operas Gauguin
(Melbourne Festival 2000) and The
Burrow (Perth Festival, Sydney, Melbourne 1994-95 and broadcast by
ABC Radio), both with Michael Smetanin, and the plays Lenz
(Melbourne Festival 1996), Samarkand
and The Famine (Rules of Thumb season, Red Shed Company, Adelaide
1997 and ABC Radio 1998).
Her
popular fantasy series, The Books
of Pellinor, was first released in 2002, and is published in
Australia
(Penguin Books), the
UK
, the
US
and
Europe
. The Gift, the first instalment of the epic quartet, was nominated in
three categories in the Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian
Speculative Fiction in 2002 and named one of the Notable Books of 2003
by the Children's Book Council of Australia.
The final book has just been released in the
US
.
She
was a member of the Creative Australia component of the 2020
Summit
last year and was the 2000 Australia Council writer in residence at
Cambridge University
,
UK
. She was poetry editor for Overland
Extra (1992), Modern Writing
(1992-1994) and Voices (National
Library, 1996) and is founding editor of the literary arts ezine Masthead
(masthead.net.au).
(Click
here for Alison's acceptance speech)
