David Stavanger

David Stavanger is poet, performer, cultural producer, editor, and former psychologist living on Dharawal land in Port Kembla. His first full-length poetry collection, The Special (UQP, 2014), was awarded several prizes. David is the co-editor of Solid Air: Collected Australian & New Zealand Spoken Word (UQP, 2019) and Admissions: Voices Within Mental Health (Upswell, 2022), which received a NSW Mental Health Arts & Media Award. Case Notes (UWAP, 2020) won the 2021 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry, and his new collection is The Drop Off (Upswell, 2025).

David works as an Artistic Director at Red Room Poetry. He was previously the co-director of QLD Poetry Festival and part of the Programming Team at Woodford Folk Festival. He is also known for his work with several community writing projects that amplify marginalised voices and lived experience writers including Brotherhood of the Wordless (writers with autism precluded from speech) and as the producer of MAD Poetry (writers with lived mental health experience.)