It’s an honour to receive the 2018 Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award. I started writing after I became ill, seven years ago. Writing helped me own and reclaim my experience. Having an incredible support network of family, friends and mentors has been so important. I couldn’t have achieved this award without you all. Thank you.
For the past seven years I have been entering the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for an unpublished manuscript and it feels very surreal and thrilling to have won it this year. Thank you to my wonderful family, friends and poetry mentors for your support and encouragement- it means so much. Thank you also to the Queensland Poetry Festival, UQP and judges Felicity Plunkett and Ali Alizadeh. I’m looking forward to the editing process and having my debut collection of poetry launched at the 2019 Queensland Poetry Festival!
This week I took up a Writer Development Residency at Varuna, the National Writers’ House in Katoomba, the Blue Mountains. It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. I stayed in the Bear room, which I soon discovered was named for its collection of teddy bears on the shelves above the books. Patchwork quilts decorated every room and I felt right at home. As part of my residency I had two consultations with the incredible Carol Major, one of the Varuna consultants. She saw into the heart of my manuscript and helped me develop it, and I thank her so much for her generosity and kindness.
As I write this, on my last day at Varuna, I am sitting at the big writing desk in the studio attached to the Bear room, that overlooks the gardens. I stayed with four other writers who were all so supportive and talented. After each day of writing, we would meet together in the evenings for wine, a home-cooked meal by Sheila, and sometimes a session of readings and toasted marshmallows beside the fireplace. I will always remember my stay at Varuna, and the writers I met there.
I’m so thrilled that my contributor’s copies of my poetry chapbook The Last Postman have arrived today! Thank you to Michael Brennan and Michelle Cahill for having me as part of Vagabond Press deciBels 3 series and for Michelle’s lovely words in her introduction to the series: Anna Jacobson’s surreal narratives riff on memory, desire and destiny with stylised Mozartian grace in The Last Postman. The train carriage becomes a framing device for her beguiling stories, echoing exile, survival and post-memory.
To order a copy of The Last Postman, please click here.
To read more of Michelle’s deciBels 3 introduction, please click here.
I feel honoured to be a finalist in the 65th Blake Prize for my artwork ‘Separation Ceremony’. The Blake prize is ‘one of Australia’s longest standing and most prestigious prizes which encourages conversation about spirituality and religion through art’ (Blake Prize). My artwork will be exhibited in the upcoming Blake Prize exhibition at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre from 12 May – 1 July 2018. I am among 80 finalists out of 769 entrants. For more details about the exhibition and other finalists, view the link here. I was also interviewed for the West End Magazine and you can read the article here.
I’m thrilled my poetry chapbook The Last Postman, is coming out as part of Vagabond Press deciBels series 3. In The Last Postman, a girl delivers letters addressed to travellers in carriages on a train. The Last Postman is a chapbook of unusual poetic letters that give intimate glimpses into the lives of everyday characters. With themes of the domestic, yearning, hope, and a hint of magical realism, these are poems of quiet and acute observation grounded in the experience of a familiar contemporary urban environment.
You can preorder your copy here, which will arrive at the earliest from the end of March.
On December 9 2017, Turtle Love written by Renee Hills and illustrated by Anna Jacobson, launched into the world! Thank you to all the supporters and friends who pledged to the Pozible crowdfunding campaign. Anna and Renee reached their target and were able to do their first print run. Turtle Love is currently available from Renee’s website. Read an interview with Anna and Renee at readilearn.
I’m thrilled that my comic zine ‘Adventures of the Outer-chain’ was selected to be part of the Digital Writers’ Festival Zine Fair. You can check it out and read it here.
I’m very excited and honoured to be part of the Australian Book Review’s States of Poetry Queensland, Series Two. Thank you to the wonderful editor Felicity Plunkett for having me as part of the series in 2017, among such fabulous poets including Zenobia Frost, Pascalle Burton, David Stavanger, Sam Wagan Watson and Liam Ferney. You can read my poems featured here.
