Shapeshifting:
First Nations Lyric Nonfiction
by Jeanine LeaneEllen van Neerven

Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet, essayist and critic from south-west NSW. She is the recipient of the David Unaipon Award for her first novel Purple Threads; and her latest book is the poetry collection Gawimarra: Gathering was released in 2024. Jeanine's essays in the areas of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness, poetry, and creative nonfiction have been published widely. She was the recipient of the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize, and she has won the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Prize for Poetry twice. In 2023 she won the David Harold Tribe Award for Poetry, Australia’s richest poetry prize. She has been the recipient of a Red Room Poetry Fellowship and two Australian Research Council Fellowships for research into Blak writing and storytelling. Jeanine taught Creative Writing and Aboriginal Literature for many years at the University of Melbourne. She is the poetry editor of Meanjin; and she continues to write between Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country and the East Kulin Nations of Naarm.

Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh and Dutch heritage. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers’ Prize. They are the author of two poetry collections: Comfort Food, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize; and Throat, which won the Kenneth Slessor Prize, the Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Their latest book, Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction in 2024.