‘Clarke’s startlingly emotive collection encompasses the scope of human experience: betrayal, love, foolishness, hope, helplessness and anger at “the way things are”.’ – Lou Heinrich, Newtown Review of Books ‘These are tales of sheer storytelling prowess, and a deeply ambivalent take on hope and despair in the modern world.’ – Martin Shaw, Readings

And she wants us, above all, to learn how to listen.’ – Fiona Wright, Sydney Review of Books

She wants us to feel different and out of our depth. She wants us to have to adjust our expectations and learn the different languages in which her characters speak. ‘Clarke wants us to be uncomfortable, to lose our bearings she wants us to squirm. ‘Nourished by Clarke’s empathetic imagination, her narratives create the lived experience of suffering and despair, resilience and hope, for the powerless, the discarded, the socially adrift… As well as being ideologically complex, the stories also resist easy moral judgements Clarke encourages us to listen to the voices of those who are typically silenced.’ – Susan Midalia, Australian Book Review Source: The Wheeler Centre - Books, Writing, Ideas The Patchwork Bike, Maxine's first picture book with Van T. The Hate Race, a memoir about growing up black in Australia won the NSW Premier's Literary Award Multicultural NSW Award 2017 and was shortlisted for an ABIA, an Indie Award, the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and Stella Prize. Maxine has published three poetry collections including Carrying the World, which won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry 2017 and was shortlisted for the Colin Roderick Award. She was also named as one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelists for 2015. Maxine's short fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published in numerous publications including Overland, the Age, Meanjin, the Saturday Paper and the Big Issue. Her critically acclaimed short fiction collection Foreign Soil won the ABIA for Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2015 and the 2015 Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Matt Richell Award for New Writing at the 2015 ABIAs and the 2015 Stella Prize. Maxine Beneba Clarke is a widely published Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent.

Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke