Maxine Beneba Clarke

Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent. She is the author of the ABIA-winning short fiction collection Foreign Soil, and the memoir The Hate Race. Her picture books for children include The CBCA Honour Book The Patchwork Bike, We Know a Place(an ode to bookstores), and the critically acclaimed illustrated poem When We Say Black Lives Matter, which was longlisted for the UK’s Kate Greenaway medal. Maxine is the author of the poetry collections Carrying the World (which won the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Award for Poetry), How Decent Folk Behave, the ABIA-winning It’s the Sound of the Thing: 100 new poems for young people, and its 2025 follow up Stuff I’m (Not) Sorry For: 99 new poems for young people. Her most recently collection is Beautiful Changelings. From 2023-2025 she was the inaugural Poet in Residence at The University of Melbourne.