we are all just one small disasteraway from sinking, and sometimes you only realisewhen you''re gasping for airOn a daylight street in Minneapolis Minnesota, a Black man is asphyxiated - by callous knee of an officer, by cruel might of state, and under crushing weight of colony. In Melbourne the body of another woman has been found - this time, after catching a late tram home.The Atlantic has run out of the English alphabet, when christening hurricanes this season. The earth is on fire - from the redwoods of California, to Australia''s east coast. The sea draws back, and tsunamis lash out in Samoa and Sumatra. Water rises in Sulawesi and Nagasaki. Bloated cod are surfacing, all along the Murray Darling.The virus arrives, and the virus thrives. Authorities seal the public housing towers up, and truck in one cop to every five residents. Notre Dame is ablaze - the cathedral spire blackened, and teetering.Out in Biloela, the deportation vans have arrived. Every Friday, in cities all across the world, children are walking out of school. The wolves are circling. The wolves are circling.These poems speak of the world that is, and sing for a world that may one day be.''One of the most compelling voices in Australian poetry this decade'' Overland Literary Journal''a powerful and fearless storyteller'' Dave Eggers''Readers are left with the sense they have been seen, heard and understood'' Books + Publishing

Winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Picture Book Award 2019Winner of the Children''s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Crichton Award for Debut Illustrator 2017Selected as a CBCA Honour Picture Book 2017Shortlisted for PATRICIA WRIGHTSON PRIZE FOR CHILDREN''S LITERATURE 2018''Beautifully written and incredibly powerful.'' Books + Publishing''this book is just what many of us need right now'' - starred Kirkus ReviewWhen you live in a village at the edge of the No-Go Desert, you need to make your own fun. That''s when you and your brothers get inventive and build a bike from scratch, using everyday items like an old milk pot (maybe mum is still using it, maybe not) and a used flour sack. You can even make a numberplate from bark, if you want. The end result is a spectacular bike, perfect for going bumpity-bump over sandhills, past your fed-up mum and right through your mud-for-walls home.A delightful story from multi-award-winning author Maxine Beneba Clarke, beautifully illustrated by street artist Van T Rudd.

Difference is everywhere, just look and see. This whole-wide-big-world is wondrous-unique.A gorgeous picture book about our diverse and wonderful world from award-winning author Maxine Beneba Clarke and illustrator Isobel Knowles.PRAISE FOR THE PATCHWORK BIKE''Like all the best writing, The Patchwork Bike asks more questions than it answers, making it a great conversation starter to learn more about other cultures, but it''s also a delightful picture book for kids aged three and up that depicts the universal joy that riding a bike bestows.'' - Books+Publishing''This is a wonderfully fast-moving picture book that celebrates the rebellious, the inventive and the just plain entertaining spirit of kids who are left to, rather than on their own devices.'' - Picture Book Perusal

A joyous illustrated tribute to bookshops everywhere, and the special place they hold in children''s hearts and minds, from of one Australia''s most beloved writers.We know a place that''s mysterious-magic,a window to lives you can''t even imagine.We know a secret world-wakening secret,a brain-boggling secret, on Ballarat Street.Every Saturday, when the chores are done, two children set out on a journey to their local bookshop, a magical place where sneaky stories escape as you peep in the door and there''s plentiful magic for each and for all. Monsters, giants, trolls and pirates ahoy! But what happens when some cheeky creatures follow the children home one day?A playful love letter to those wondrous places where secrets and magic live around every corner and between every cover.Written and illustrated by the award-winning Maxine Beneba Clarke as a celebration of the joy of reading, the magic of community and her own favourite bookshop.''With Maxine Beneba Clarke''s trademark melodious language, which is so vivid it seems to leap off each page, this joyful read-aloud is perfect for storytime . . . A glorious expression of the joy and wonder of reading. Young bookworms and their families will cherish this love letter to bookshops'' BOOKS+PUBLISHING''A beautiful tribute . . . Like young imaginations, Beneba Clarke''s illustrations literally fill the pages so they brim with colour'' GOOD READING MAGAZINE''A fun and vivid story . . . With beautiful, textured illustrations, We Know a Place is a love letter to bookshops and the magic they provide'' READINGS, Best Picture Books of 2023

WINNER- Indie Book Awards 2015 (Best Debut Fiction Book)WINNER- The ABIA Award (Literary Fiction Book of the Year) 2015WINNER- Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists of 2015WINNER- Victorian Premier''s Unpublished Manuscript Award 2013''Foreign Soil will stay with you with the force of elemental truth. Clarke is the real deal'' Dave EggersIn this collection of award-winning stories, Melbourne writer Maxine Beneba Clarke has given a voice to the disenfranchised, the lost, the downtrodden and the mistreated. It will challenge you, it will have you by the heartstrings. This is contemporary fiction at its finest.In Melbourne''s western suburbs, in a dilapidated block of flats overhanging the rattling Footscray train lines, a young black mother is working on a collection of stories.The book is called Foreign Soil. Inside its covers, a desperate asylum seeker is pacing the hallways of Sydney''s notorious Villawood detention centre, a seven-year-old Sudanese boy has found solace in a patchwork bike, an enraged black militant is on the warpath through the rebel squats of 1960s Brixton, a Mississippi housewife decides to make the ultimate sacrifice to save her son from small-town ignorance, a young woman leaves rural Jamaica in search of her destiny, and a Sydney schoolgirl loses her way.The young mother keeps writing, the rejection letters keep arriving . . .''A woven tapestry of the shared experience of living in a country that is not your own'' Stylist

Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier''s Literary Award for Non-FictionShortlisted for the Stella Prize 2017''Against anything I had ever been told was possible, I was turning white. On the surface of my skin, a miracle was quietly brewing . . .''Suburban Australia. Sweltering heat. Three bedroom blonde-brick. Family of five. Beat-up Ford Falcon. Vegemite on toast. Maxine Beneba Clarke''s life is just like all the other Aussie kids on her street.Except for this one, glaring, inescapably obvious thing.From one of Australia''s most exciting writers, and the author of the multi-award-winning FOREIGN SOIL, comes THE HATE RACE: a powerful, funny, and at times devastating memoir about growing up black in white middle-class Australia.

we are all just one small disasteraway from sinking, and sometimes you only realisewhen you''re gasping for airOn a daylight street in Minneapolis Minnesota, a Black man is asphyxiated - by callous knee of an officer, by cruel might of state, and under crushing weight of colony. In Melbourne the body of another woman has been found - this time, after catching a late tram home.The Atlantic has run out of the English alphabet, when christening hurricanes this season. The earth is on fire - from the redwoods of California, to Australia''s east coast. The sea draws back, and tsunamis lash out in Samoa and Sumatra. Water rises in Sulawesi and Nagasaki. Bloated cod are surfacing, all along the Murray Darling.The virus arrives, and the virus thrives. Authorities seal the public housing towers up, and truck in one cop to every five residents. Notre Dame is ablaze - the cathedral spire blackened, and teetering.Out in Biloela, the deportation vans have arrived. Every Friday, in cities all across the world, children are walking out of school. The wolves are circling. The wolves are circling.These poems speak of the world that is, and sing for a world that may one day be.''One of the most compelling voices in Australian poetry this decade'' Overland Literary Journal''a powerful and fearless storyteller'' Dave Eggers''Readers are left with the sense they have been seen, heard and understood'' Books + Publishing

Winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Picture Book Award 2019Winner of the Children''s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Crichton Award for Debut Illustrator 2017Selected as a CBCA Honour Picture Book 2017Shortlisted for PATRICIA WRIGHTSON PRIZE FOR CHILDREN''S LITERATURE 2018''Beautifully written and incredibly powerful.'' Books + Publishing''this book is just what many of us need right now'' - starred Kirkus ReviewWhen you live in a village at the edge of the No-Go Desert, you need to make your own fun. That''s when you and your brothers get inventive and build a bike from scratch, using everyday items like an old milk pot (maybe mum is still using it, maybe not) and a used flour sack. You can even make a numberplate from bark, if you want. The end result is a spectacular bike, perfect for going bumpity-bump over sandhills, past your fed-up mum and right through your mud-for-walls home.A delightful story from multi-award-winning author Maxine Beneba Clarke, beautifully illustrated by street artist Van T Rudd.

Difference is everywhere, just look and see. This whole-wide-big-world is wondrous-unique.A gorgeous picture book about our diverse and wonderful world from award-winning author Maxine Beneba Clarke and illustrator Isobel Knowles.PRAISE FOR THE PATCHWORK BIKE''Like all the best writing, The Patchwork Bike asks more questions than it answers, making it a great conversation starter to learn more about other cultures, but it''s also a delightful picture book for kids aged three and up that depicts the universal joy that riding a bike bestows.'' - Books+Publishing''This is a wonderfully fast-moving picture book that celebrates the rebellious, the inventive and the just plain entertaining spirit of kids who are left to, rather than on their own devices.'' - Picture Book Perusal

A joyous illustrated tribute to bookshops everywhere, and the special place they hold in children''s hearts and minds, from of one Australia''s most beloved writers.We know a place that''s mysterious-magic,a window to lives you can''t even imagine.We know a secret world-wakening secret,a brain-boggling secret, on Ballarat Street.Every Saturday, when the chores are done, two children set out on a journey to their local bookshop, a magical place where sneaky stories escape as you peep in the door and there''s plentiful magic for each and for all. Monsters, giants, trolls and pirates ahoy! But what happens when some cheeky creatures follow the children home one day?A playful love letter to those wondrous places where secrets and magic live around every corner and between every cover.Written and illustrated by the award-winning Maxine Beneba Clarke as a celebration of the joy of reading, the magic of community and her own favourite bookshop.''With Maxine Beneba Clarke''s trademark melodious language, which is so vivid it seems to leap off each page, this joyful read-aloud is perfect for storytime . . . A glorious expression of the joy and wonder of reading. Young bookworms and their families will cherish this love letter to bookshops'' BOOKS+PUBLISHING''A beautiful tribute . . . Like young imaginations, Beneba Clarke''s illustrations literally fill the pages so they brim with colour'' GOOD READING MAGAZINE''A fun and vivid story . . . With beautiful, textured illustrations, We Know a Place is a love letter to bookshops and the magic they provide'' READINGS, Best Picture Books of 2023

WINNER- Indie Book Awards 2015 (Best Debut Fiction Book)WINNER- The ABIA Award (Literary Fiction Book of the Year) 2015WINNER- Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists of 2015WINNER- Victorian Premier''s Unpublished Manuscript Award 2013''Foreign Soil will stay with you with the force of elemental truth. Clarke is the real deal'' Dave EggersIn this collection of award-winning stories, Melbourne writer Maxine Beneba Clarke has given a voice to the disenfranchised, the lost, the downtrodden and the mistreated. It will challenge you, it will have you by the heartstrings. This is contemporary fiction at its finest.In Melbourne''s western suburbs, in a dilapidated block of flats overhanging the rattling Footscray train lines, a young black mother is working on a collection of stories.The book is called Foreign Soil. Inside its covers, a desperate asylum seeker is pacing the hallways of Sydney''s notorious Villawood detention centre, a seven-year-old Sudanese boy has found solace in a patchwork bike, an enraged black militant is on the warpath through the rebel squats of 1960s Brixton, a Mississippi housewife decides to make the ultimate sacrifice to save her son from small-town ignorance, a young woman leaves rural Jamaica in search of her destiny, and a Sydney schoolgirl loses her way.The young mother keeps writing, the rejection letters keep arriving . . .''A woven tapestry of the shared experience of living in a country that is not your own'' Stylist

Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier''s Literary Award for Non-FictionShortlisted for the Stella Prize 2017''Against anything I had ever been told was possible, I was turning white. On the surface of my skin, a miracle was quietly brewing . . .''Suburban Australia. Sweltering heat. Three bedroom blonde-brick. Family of five. Beat-up Ford Falcon. Vegemite on toast. Maxine Beneba Clarke''s life is just like all the other Aussie kids on her street.Except for this one, glaring, inescapably obvious thing.From one of Australia''s most exciting writers, and the author of the multi-award-winning FOREIGN SOIL, comes THE HATE RACE: a powerful, funny, and at times devastating memoir about growing up black in white middle-class Australia.