Stephanie Green
Poet, storyteller, academic, essayist, traveler, gelato aficionada.
As you might imagine that’s too many hats to wear and there are not enough hours in the day to wear them all, so recently I’ve found myself concentrating on writing and dreaming of far away places. .
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About Stephanie
I’m an Australian writer, traveler and former academic. Born in PNG, I grew up in Melbourne. My mother’s people were farmers in East Gippsland and I spent a lot of time as a kid in the bush.
I studied and worked in Canberra and Perth, as a cook, teacher, publisher and arts administrator.
I moved to Queensland 18 years ago and joined Griffith University, where I’m now an Adjunct Senior Lecturer. Working with tertiary students has been the most rewarding job I’ve ever done.
Through all of my endeavours, writing has been the single thread that has sustained me. I write poetry, short fiction, essays and biography. My other passion is reading.
Getting there
I’ve read widely all my life – Australian and international literature. Lately I’ve been reading wonderful books by Ali Cobby Eckerman, Omar Musa, Randa Abdel-Fattah and Rachel Morton. Literature has always been the central thread in my life.
Why did I start writing? Maybe out of inspiration, or envy, or hope – I just knew I had to write – knew it from a young age. I never believed it was possible, until I started doing it. I wanted to express myself, although I was still discovering who I was and what I really wanted to say. In the beginning I wrote little poems and short stories. As the years passed I wrote longer poems and longer stories – maybe because when you’re older you have more to say, or maybe you get more relaxed.
Community
Having links with other writers and creative people has been important. I’ve been part of a lively and supportive group of south-east Queensland poets, many associated with Calanthe Poetry, based at North Tamborine. It’s grounded my writing and provided a tremendous sense of community.
The prose poetry network I belong to has also helped propel my writing. This is a ‘conversation’ in the form of an emailed writing exchange: no commentary, just prose poems exchanged as loose prompts between 25 poets, in Australia and overseas. It was initiated as a two year project by the International Poetry Studies Institute at the University of Canberra and the writers kept it going when the project was over because it’s so productive for us.
Influences
I don’t know if I’ve had any specific influences. At the outset, I was very impressed by the short stories of New Zealand writer Katharine Mansfield. Olga Masters and Elizabeth Jolley appealed. These are all writers for whom every word counts. Isabelle Allende’s expressionistic writing offered a window on other possibilities for how to use words and ideas – although I never had any thought of emulating her.
American poet Adrienne Rich captured my interest when I was younger. I’ve always admired the immediacy of her work. I also had tremendous respect for writers like Bertolt Brecht, Gabriel Garcia Lorca and Walter Benjamin. Eventually, I read Rilke too, and Mary Oliver. Australian writers I read in the early days were Fay Zwicky, Lionel Fogarty, Robert Adamson, Myron Lysenko and Kevin Brophy. I can’t say I engaged with them in any direct way in my own work, but they showed me how to get hold of words. How to make writing strong.
Books
My books include three works of poetry, a short story collection, a biography and several works of scholarship.
My most recent poetry collection is Sahara Rain (Liquid Amber Press Sept 2026).
I produced a chapbook entitled Seams of Repair with Calanthe Press (2023).
A collection of prose poems, Breathing in Stormy Seasons, Recent Work Press (2019).
Melbourne artist James Yuncken and I created a chapbook/catalogue Shadow Memories to accompany his exhibition ‘The Drawing Room’ in 2015, featuring his drawings, responding to my poetry.
A volume of selected short fiction, Too Much Too Soon, was published with Pandanus in 2006.
I also collaborated with Canberra New Music Ensemble, and contributed to the group’s Voices in the Landscape CD (CNME 1991).
Academic
Scholarly publications include a substantial body of academic research in literary and screen narrative studies, with articles appearing in journals such as Axon, Continuum and TEXT . In 2013 I published the mother/daughter biography, The Public Lives of Charlotte and Marie Stopes with Pickering & Chatto. My most recent full length work of scholarship is Haunted Histories and Troubled Pasts (with Amanda Howell), released with Bloomsbury in 2024.
My partner Ian and I have made our home on the beautiful lands of the Kombumerri/Yugembeh peoples in the Gold Coast region.
