Skip to content

Omar Musa and Maxine Beneba Clarke

When

Event Status

Maxine Beneba Clarke won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript for Foreign Soil, a stunning short-story collection whose settings span the world, from Footscray to Sudan, Jamaica to London. Compared to Nam Le’s The Boat in its virtuosity and ability to transport the reader into very different characters and settings, it’s both fierce and engaging, putting displaced people at its centre.

Award-winning slam poet Omar Musa has performed extensively around Australia and the world. His ground-breaking debut, Here Come the Dogs, is a hip-hop verse novel that offers a rare glimpse inside the world of Australia’s multi-ethnic youth. Musa writes from experience of the hip-hop community; his work pulses with hedonistic energy, and the crackle of disaffected, sometimes violent, young men living on the edge.

Now Read This

We’ve all heard of Tim Winton – and now, Hannah Kent. But who are the next crop of top-tier Australian writers? The writers who critics laud, serious readers love – and, most importantly, who we believe should be read by anyone who wants to keep up with the best of new Australian writing.

These are the writers whose books will be on the next national literary prize shortlists; the ones other writers love, and whose words will grab you and not let you go.

In Now Read This, we’ll introduce you to the Australian writers who are making a big splash right now, in an event that pairs two terrific writers with a host, and puts them on stage together to talk about their work.

Featuring

Maxine Beneba Clarke

Maxine Beneba Clarke is the author of the acclaimed memoir The Hate Race, the award-winning short fiction collection Foreign Soil, the poetry collections Carrying The World and How Decent Folk Behave, and many other books for adults and children. Her forthcoming poetry collection is It’s The S... Read more

Omar Musa

Omar Musa is a Malaysian-Australian rapper and poet from Queanbeyan, Australia. He is the former winner of the Australian Poetry Slam and the Indian Ocean Poetry Slam. His first book is Here Come the Dogs. He has released three hip-hop albums, two poetry books (including Parang), appeared on ABC’s... Read more

Jeff Sparrow

Jeff Sparrow is a writer, editor, broadcaster, and Walkley award-winning journalist. He is a columnist for The Guardian Australia, a former Breakfaster at Melbourne’s 3RRR, and a past editor of Overland literary journal. His most recent books are Provocations: New and Selected Writing; Crimes a... Read more

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

More details

Stay up to date with our upcoming events and special announcements by subscribing to The Wheeler Centre's mailing list.

Privacy Policy

The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Centre stands. We acknowledge and pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past and present, as the custodians of the world’s oldest continuous living culture.