Siobhan Harvey’s poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in journals and anthologies in New Zealand, Australia, America, United Kingdom and Europe. She is the author of eight books, and editor of numerous collections. The Poetry Archive (UK) holds a Poet’s Page devoted to her work, describing her poetry as ‘that of a quester – a voyager — meditating on separation and discovery, on time lost and time regained, on the tug of distant familial connections, and the new global connectivity which means never being out-of-touch’.

Siobhan has received multiple accolades for poetry and fiction. She is twice winner of New Zealand’s premier prize, the Landfall Kathleen Grattan Award, both for poetry (2013) and for a sequence of poems (2019). In addition she has won the Landfall Essay Prize (2011), the Kevin Ireland Poetry Competition (2012), was runner-up in the New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competitions (2014 & 2015), was shortlisted for the 2016 D’Arcy Writers Residencies, and won the AUT Champion of Women Award (2018). In 2020 Siobhan won the published poet division of the UNESCO City of Literature Robert Burns Poetry Prize and was the recipient of the NZSA Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship. She was shortlisted twice for the Janet Frame Memorial Award for Poetry (2015 & 2016) and recently The Janet Frame Literary Trust named Siobhan as the 2021 recipient.

On the international stage Siobhan’s story ‘Black Origami Birds’, published in the Griffith Review (Aus) and Asian Literary Review (Hong Kong), won the Write Well Award for Fiction (US, 2016). Siobhan won the Australian Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize (2012), the Notable Essay Memoir Magazine Competition (US, 2018), was long-listed for the Australian Book Review Peter Porter Poetry Prize (2019), and was nominated for the US Pushcart Prize.

Siobhan holds a PhD in Creative Writing and is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Creative Writing, Auckland University of Technology, however she has taught creative writing across New Zealand and the UK. She has appeared in multiple literary festivals including Manchester (UK), Ubud (Indonesia), and Queensland (Australia), as well as diverse New Zealand festivals. These include Guest Poet at the Kapititi Poetry Readings and Guest Author in the National Writers Forum (New Zealand Society of Authors), Ruapehu Writers Festival and Going West Literary Festival (2016), National Writers Forum (New Zealand Society of Authors) and Going West Literary Festival (2018), as well as the Going West Literary Weekend, and the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival (2019). She was also Guest Poet at the 2019 Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Week in Rotorua. Siobhan was president of the New Zealand Society of Authors (2017-2019).

Siobhan’s work has appeared in journals and periodicals such as Griffith Review (Australia), Memoirs of the Feminine Divine: Voices of Power and Invisibility (US, anthology), Landfall and the Atlas Collective. She is a regular writer for Landfall, New Zealand Herald, New Zealand Review of Books, Stuff (online) and Sunday Star Times. Her work was also published in the New Zealand anthology Leaving the Red Zone: Poems about the Christchurch Earthquake.

Siobhan’s latest collection Ghosts (Otago University Press, 2021) is about migration, outcasts, the search for home, and the ghosts we live with, including the ones who occupy our memories, ancestries and stories. Ghosts was longlisted for the Mary & Peter Biggs Award for Poetry.

Links

Otago University Press writer page

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

Auckland University of Technology staff page

New Zealand Society of Authors writer page

Poetry Archive poet page

NZSA announcement of the 2021 Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry (2021)

Landfall Essay announcement (October, 2020)

Kathleen Grattan Prize announcement (June, 2020)

Landfall review of Cloudboy (Oct, 2014)

The NZ Listener interview with Siobhan for ‘Chapter and Verse’ (July, 2014)

takahē 83 review of Essential New Zealand Poems (2014)

Radio New Zealand review of Essential New Zealand Poems (June, 2014)

takahē 83 review of Cloudboy (2014)

Radio New Zealand interview with Siobhan following her Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry (Oct, 2013)

New Zealand Herald review of Lost Relatives (July, 2011)

Radio New Zealand interview discussing Lost Relatives (June, 2011)