New monthly blogger – Samuel Wagan Watson!

An enormous thanks to Fiona McFarlane for her inspiring posts.

This month, our blogger is Samuel Wagan Watson. His bio is below.

Samuel Wagan Watson is a full-time writer for hire. Born in Brisbane in 1972, Samuel is of honourable ancestry of Munanjali, Birri Gubba, German, and Gaelic descent.   He was the winner of the 1999 David Unaipon award for emerging Indigenous writers with his first collection of poetry, Of Muse, Meandering and Midnight.  Since then he has written three more collections; Itinerant Blues (2001, University of Queensland Press), Hotel Bone (2001, Vagabond Press) and Smoke Encrypted Whispers (2004, University of Queensland Press) and Love Poems and Death Threats, 2014, University of Queensland Press. Samuel has toured the country extensively as a writer and has visited New Zealand, Germany and Norway.  His writing has been successfully translated into German and he was the guest of Norway’s Indigenous Sami peoples to celebrate the launch of ‘BLA BEVEGELSE’; the Norwegian translation of Itinerant Blues in 2005. His poetry has been commissioned for numerous purposes; from the hand-rails of Brisbane’s Green Bridge to haiku for the International Space Station. He continues to proudly be an active ambassador for Indigenous Literacy Foundation. He lives and writes full-time in Brisbane and is published by University of Queensland Press.