
Ellen van Neerven

Ellen van Neerven (born 1990) is an Aboriginal Australian author, educator and editor. They are queer and prefer to use non-binary gender self-descriptors. Their first work of fiction, "Heat and Light" (2013), won several awards, and in 2019 Van Neerven won the Queensland Premier's Young Publishers and Writers Award. Their second collection of poetry, "Throat" (2020), won three awards at the 2021 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, including Book of the Year.
Early life and education.
Van Neerven was born in 1990 to Dutch and Aboriginal parents, and is of the Mununjali clan of the Yugambeh nation. 
They studied Creative Writing at the Queensland University of Technology.
They are openly queer and prefer non-binary gender pronouns.
Writing career.
Van Neerven's first book, "Heat and Light," won the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards' David Unaipon Award for unpublished Indigenous writers, the 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Award's Indigenous Writers Prize and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2015.
Their second book, the poetry collection "Comfort Food", was published in 2016. One of van Neerven's stories, "Confidence Game", was featured in SBS podcast series, "True Stories", in 2015.
"Throat" (2020) is van Neerven's second collection of poems, and consists of five themed chapters: "The haunt-walk in"; "Whiteness is always approaching"; "I can't wait to meet my future genders"; "Speaking outside"; and " Take me to the back of my throat". "Throat" won three prizes at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards: Book of the Year; the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry; and the Multicultural NSW Award.
Other activities.
In September 2015, in a collaboration with Poets House in New York, a recording of six First Nations Australia Writers Network (FNAWN) members reading their work was presented at a special event, which was recorded. Van Neerven was one of the readers, along with Jeanine Leane, Dub Leffler, Melissa Lucashenko, Bruce Pascoe, and Jared Thomas.
Van Neerven is co-host and creative producer of two podcasts, "Extraordinary Voices for Extraordinary Times", launched in June 2020, and "Between the Leaves", launched in October 2020.