Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian writer and artist of Afro-Caribbean heritage. She has been a cover artist for Overland and Cordite Poetry Review, and has illustrated for Verity La and Spineless Wonders. Maxine won the 2013 Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript with her short fiction collection Foreign Soil, sparking a small bidding war for her work, which she watched calmly whilst eating a monster bucket of popcorn. Foreign Soil will be published by Hachette Australia in early 2014. Clarke's latest poetry collection, nothing here needs fixing, was recently launched at the 2013 Melbourne Writers Festival.

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