Wendy Elizabeth Jenkins (1952 – December 2022) was an Australian poet and editor at Fremantle Press for 43 years. She also wrote as Jenna Kinsey.
Life Jenkins was born in Perth, Western Australia. She was the fourth generation of her family to live in Fremantle.
As an editor at Fremantle Press, Jenkins reviewed over 10,000 manuscripts. One of them was Albert Facey's, A Fortunate Life, which she discovered early in her career and later described as "an important social document as well as a compelling personal story simply told". Other writers whose work she nurtured include John Kinsella, Joan London and Kim Scott.
She served on the Literature Board of the Australia Council from 1985 to 1987.
Jenkins retired from Fremantle Press in 2019, after 43 years' service.
She died in December 2022, aged 70.
Awards and recognition Jenkins was joint winner of the Western Australian Sesquicentenary Literary Competition's short story prize for "Uneasy Rider" in 1979. She and Ray Coffey won the Special Award at the 1986 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards for Portrait: A West Coast Collection.
Jenkins was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours in recognition of her contribution to literature as author, editor and publisher and for her mentoring of Australian writers.
Selected works
Poetry
Out of Water into Light, 1979 Rogue Equations, 2000
Young adult novels
Hot News, as Jenna Kinsey, 1990, republished 1997 as Jenkins Killer Boots, 1996 The Big Game, 1998 Gunna Burn, 2000
As editor
Portrait: A West Coast Collection, co-edited with Ray Coffey, 1986 No Substitute: Prose, Poems, Images, co-edited with Terri-Ann White, Anna Gibbs and Noel King, 1990 Reading from the Left, editor, 1994 The Moving World: Poems, by Michael Heald, 2011
References