Maxine Beneba Clarke is the author of the ABIA and Indie award-winning short fiction collection Foreign Soil and the critically acclaimed memoir The Hate Race. Her poetry collection Carrying The World won the 2017 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry. Maxine is the author of the CBCA Honour book listed picture book The Patchwork Bike, illustrated by Melbourne artist Van T Rudd, and her second picture book Wide Big World will be published in November 2018. She writes for The Saturday Paper. Poetry is her first love.
"Maxine Beneba Clarke." Red Room Poetry, 2026.
Maxine Beneba Clarke, born in 1979 and raised in Sydney, is a member of the African diaspora in Australia, with Guyanese and Jamaican heritage. This has heavily influenced her work and she is extremely active and well-respected in the Australian literary and cultural scene.