Marcella Polain

Marcella Polain (born 1958) is an Australian-resident poet, novelist and short fiction writer.

Early life

Marcella Polain was born in Singapore and with her family migrated to Australia at the age of two with her Irish father and Armenian mother. She began writing as a child.

Education

Polain studied Literature and Creative Arts at Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University). In 1981 she attended the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney. At Western Australian Secondary Teachers' College (now Edith Cowan University), she took a Post Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education. Polain completed a PhD at the University of Western Australia in 2006.

Career

Polain entered the Perth poetry scene in the early 1990s. She was awarded grants by the Department for Culture and the Arts and was a founding member (along with Morgan Yasbincek, Julia Lawrinson, Tracy Ryan and Sarah French) of Perth's WEB women's readings, which brought guests such as Dorothy Porter and Gig Ryan to Perth. She has been poetry editor for the literary magazines Westerly and Blue Dog (now folded). She tutored in Writing for 10 years at Murdoch University before becoming Senior Lecturer at Edith Cowan University in 2004. Her first novel, The Edge of the World won the University of Western Australia's Higher Degree by Research Prize for Publications. A revised version of her PhD's critical essay "The Stubborn Murmur" was long-listed for the 2010 Calibre Essay Prize. The Edge of the World was also nominated for the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Regional best first book award. In 2013, Polain was an invited poet at the inaugural International Poetry Festival in Armenia. Her poetry has been published there and in India, Romania and the USA. In 2010-2011 she was a recipient of an Australia Council Grant for New Work of Fiction. In 2012, she co-founded (at Edith Cowan University and with visual artist Dr Paul Uhlmann) the micropress 'fold editions'. She also worked with Mace Francis (composer) and Jo Pollitt and Paea Leach (dancer-choreographers) on the interdisciplinary production 'Quiet Beast'. In April 2015, the Armenian translation of The Edge of the World was launched in Armenia as part of the Literary Ark Writers' Festival in Yerevan and the Centenary Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. Also in 2015, she attended the 19th International poetry festival Poetry Nights at Curtea de arges, Romania. A Romanian-English edition of her selected poetry was launched there and she was awarded the 2015 International Grand Prize for Poetry by the Academia Orient Occident. [1]

Books

Poetry

Novels

Short fiction

Honours and Awards

References

  1. ↑ Judges fall for lesser-known books
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