Omar Musa and Maxine Beneba Clarke

Maxine Beneba Clarke won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript for Foreign Soil, a stunning short-story collection whose settings span the world, from Footscray to Sudan, Jamaica to London.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.