Jena Woodhouse grew up in Queensland, in the Capricorn Coast hinterland, the setting for many of the poems included in The Singing Ship: A Study in Resistances. Her professional occupations— which include library assistant; teacher of English as a Second Language; examiner for international tests of competency in English; book editor; an arts journalist in Athens (Greece)— have all involved language/s, literature/s and writing. She holds tertiary and professional qualifications in these contexts. Her lifelong interests include archaeology, mythology, other cultures and their literatures (especially that of Greece, where she lived and worked for ten years); travel; protection of habitat and the natural world; and writing. Her widely-published poetry and her fiction for children and adults have garnered a number of awards and honours, locally and internationally. The present collection is the thirteenth of her book and chapbook publications.
Jena’s latest collection will be launched by local poet, Wendy Morgan, at Under the Greenwood Tree Independent Bookshop and Gallery, Tamborine Mountain, on Sunday 22 February at 3pm. Following the launch Jena will be in conversation with Jock Macleod and then signing copies of The Singing Ship: A Study in Resistances.
Please RSVP to: janenegardner@gmail.com
Nicole Melanson has been awarded Australia Council grants in both poetry and fiction and was shortlisted for the 2021 Island Nonfiction Prize. Her writing is widely anthologised and published everywhere from Meanjin to Mississippi Review. A native Bostonian and former Sydneysider, Nicole now lives in Brisbane, where she mentors emerging writers with disabilities and runs WordMothers, supporting women’s work in the literary arts worldwide. Find her at www.nicolemelanson.com and www.wordmothers.com
Calanthe Press will be publishing Nicole's latest work, Siren, in April this year so watch this space for launch details in a few weeks.
Rae White is a queer non-binary transgender writer, and author of poetry collections Milk Teeth (UQP 2018) and Exactly As I Am (UQP 2022). Rae was awarded the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize in 2017, and has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, Queensland Literary Awards, and Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Their debut picture book All the Colours of the Rainbow (Lothian Children’s Books/Hachette), with illustrations by Sha’an d’Anthes, was published in January 2025. Rae is the Creative Director and Founder of Uplift Poetry, a community poetry initiative; and the Founding Editor of #EnbyLife, a journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives.
STILL POINT was launched by David Terelinck at the Zamia Theatre on Tamborine Mountain on 24 August 2025.
Beth Clapton lives in Sydney, which she acknowledges is on the unceded lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. She has an abiding love of words and a fascination with how memory and geography intersect, often encountering her earlier self on street corners and riverbanks where she enjoys taking a moment to reflect. Beth has spent several joyous years discovering her poetic voice and was delighted to be runner up in the Calanthe Collective Prize for Unpublished Poetry in 2023, and the winner in 2024.
Beth’s poetry is imbued with still points, moments that, in her own words, “give you time to hear yourself, to choose your response.” Beth brings a deeper emotional awareness to those moments that can “signal change, the onset of a new adventure, the closing of a chapter, or simply breathing room in the maelstrom of modern life.”
