Melinda Smith

Melinda Smith is a poet, editor, teacher, arts advocate and event curator based in Canberra. She is the author of seven poetry collections, including the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Award-winner Drag down to unlock or place an emergency call. Her work appears nationally and internationally in literary journals and has been widely anthologised and translated. She’s been a guest of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Newcastle Writers’ Festival, Queensland and Perth Poetry Festivals and the National Folk Festival, and has appeared at other literary and arts events all over Australia and in New Zealand, Italy and Japan. She frequently collaborates with artists in other disciplines including dancers, musicians and visual artists, and is also a former poetry editor of The Canberra Times. Her latest books are Goodbye, Cruel (Pitt Street Poetry, 2017) and the chapbook Listen, bitch with artist Caren Florance (Recent Work Press, 2019).