Last modified on Sun 4 Apr 2021 19.40 EDT
When Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk, co-editors of literary magazine Overland, announced the shortlist for the magazine’s Nakata Brophy prize for Indigenous poetry last year, they received a letter of complaint. The point of contention? There were no men in the shortlist.
“We only had women and nonbinary entries,” says Araluen. “And it was our biggest year [in terms of entry numbers] for the prize.”
Only a few years ago, she says, female entrants to any poetry prize would have been hugely outnumbered by men – and Indigenous poets were few and far between.