She has undertaken multiple writing residencies at Varuna, along with the Society of Women Writers NSW Di Yerbury Residency (UK), the KSP Writers’ Centre Fellowship (WA), the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust Creative Time Residential Fellowship (SA), and Arteles Creative Center (Finland). Helen’s poetry has been published widely, and her poems placed in over thirty national awards, including First in both the ACU Prize for Literature (2014) and the Quantum Words Science Poetry Competition (2018). Her debut novel, Promising Azra, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2016, shortlisted for a NSW Premier’s Literary Award in 2017, and awarded the Society of Women Writers NSW Young Adult Book Award in 2018. Helen Thurloe is a Sydney writer and poet. Lives / works: Ngunnawal country, Canberra She is a former poetry editor of The Canberra Times, and lives and writes on unceded Ngunnawal Country.

She frequently collaborates with artists in other disciplines including dancers, musicians and visual artists. 8 with Sara Saleh, and Borderless: A Transnational Anthology of Feminist Poetry with Saba Vasefi and Yvette Holt. Recently she co-edited the Australian Poetry Anthology Vol. She has received three substantial ArtsACT creative grants to write new work, as well as a Bundanon residency in 2016 and a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Grant (Writers Victoria) in 2018. She is the author of seven other poetry books, including the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Award winner, Drag down to unlock or place an emergency call, and her work has been widely anthologised and translated. Her latest book is Man-handled (Recent Work Press, 2020). Melinda Smith is a poet, fiction writer, editor, teacher, part-time lawyer and performer.

Promising Azra by Helen Thurloe