Ellen van Neerven (born 1990) is an Aboriginal Australian writer, educator and editor. Their first work of fiction, Heat and Light (2014), won several awards, and in 2019 van Neerven won the Queensland Premier's Young Publishers and Writers Award. Their second collection of poetry, Throat (2020), won three awards at the 2021 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, including Book of the Year.
Early life and education Van Neerven was born in 1990 to Dutch and Aboriginal parents, and is of the Mununjali clan of the Yugambeh nation. They grew up in Brisbane.
They studied creative writing at the Queensland University of Technology, graduating in 2010.
Writing career
Van Neerven first book, Heat and Light, won the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards' David Unaipon Award for unpublished Indigenous writers, the 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Award's Indigenous Writers Prize and the 2015 Dobbie Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2015.
In 2013, they edited the anthology Writing Black: New Indigenous Writing from Australia.
One of van Neerven's short stories, "Confidence Game", was featured on the SBS podcast series True Stories in 2015. Their second book, the poetry collection Comfort Food, was published in 2016. In 2017, the poem "Mango" from Comfort Food was chosen as a sample text in the English Paper 1 examination of the New South Wales Higher School Certificate
Van Neerven has had some of their poetry translated into Yugambeh by Shaun Davies.
Throat (2020) is van Neerven's second collection of poems, and consists of five themed chapters: "The haunt-walk in"; "Whiteness is always approaching"; "I can't wait to meet my future genders"; "Speaking outside"; and " Take me to the back of my throat". Throat won three prizes at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards: the Book of the Year award; the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry; and the Multicultural NSW Award.
Van Neerven published a piece in Griffith Review about sport, entitled "No Limits", in September 2021. Described as "part creative memoir, part reportage, part theoretical essay and part history lesson," the piece examines the exclusionary nature of sport, which leads to a very low rate of participation by non-binary people.
In October 2021, they received a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship.
In 2023, they released their first nonfiction book, Personal Score, which combines memoir, cultural theory and poetry to discuss the history of sport.
In June 2024, text from two of van Neerven's works, titled Shoutlines and yaburuhma dugun (infinite sky) were shown on the Federation Square Big Screen, presented as part of The Blak Infinite program at the 2024 RISING festival in Melbourne.
Their first play, swim, produced by Griffin Theatre Company, premiered at the Carriageworks in Sydney in July 2024.
In 2026, they released the middle-grade novel Ruby's Web.
Other activities
In September 2015, in a collaboration with Poets House in New York, a recording of six First Nations Australia Writers Network members reading their work was presented at a special event. Van Neerven was one of the readers, along with Jeanine Leane, Dub Leffler, Melissa Lucashenko, Bruce Pascoe and Jared Thomas.
Van Neerven was co-host and creative producer of two podcasts: Extraordinary Voices for Extraordinary Times, launched in June 2020 with Omar Sakr; and Between the Leaves, launched in October 2020 with Hermina Burns.
Personal life
are openly queer and non-binary, using they/them pronouns.
Awards and honours +YearNominated workAwardCategoryResultRef.2013Heat and LightQueensland Literary AwardsDavid Unaipon AwardWinner2015Nita Kibble Literary AwardsDobbie Literary AwardStella PrizeShortlistedThe Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian NovelistsWinner2016New South Wales Premier's Literary AwardsIndigenous Writer's PrizeVictorian Premier's Literary AwardsIndigenous Writing2019Queensland Literary AwardsYoung Publishers and Writers2020ThroatUniversity of Queensland Press Quentin Bryce AwardQueensland Literary AwardsJudith Wright Calanthe AwardShortlisted2021Victorian Premier's Literary AwardsPoetryALS Gold MedalNew South Wales Premier's Literary AwardsBook of the YearWinnerKenneth Slessor Prize for PoetryMulticultural NSW Award2022Adelaide Festival Awards for LiteratureJohn Bray Poetry AwardShortlisted2024Personal ScoreVictorian Premier's Literary AwardsNonfictionWinnerIndigenous WritingShortlistedQueensland Literary AwardsWork of State SignificanceNonfiction Book
Selected works
Fiction
Short stories
Poetry Collections
Poems
Nonfiction
As editor
Reviews
References
External links