Maxine Beneba Clarke

Maxine Beneba Clarke (born 1979) is a West-Indian Australian writer and slam poet, whose collection of short stories Foreign Soil won the Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2015. She is a contributor to The Saturday Paper.
Clarke has a Bachelor of Creative Arts/Law from Wollongong University.

Clarke's has received writing awards and fellowships including:

• Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year (2015)
• Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist of the Year (2015)
• Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship (2014)
• Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize (2013)
• Australia Council Grants (2013)

• "2015 ABIA Winners  - Australian Book Industry Awards". abiawards.com.au. Retrieved 2016-11-19. 
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• "Hazel Rowley: Fellowship". www.hazelrowley.com. Retrieved 2016-11-19. 

Clarke's works include:

• The Hate Race (2016), an autobiography
• Carrying The World (2016), a collection of poetry
• The Patchwork Bike (2016), a picture book illustrated by Van T. Rudd
• Foreign Soil (2014), a collection of short stories