Alison Croggon's poetry has been widely published in journals in Australia and internationally, and is included in many major Australian anthologies. Her first poetry collection, This is the Stone, won the Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmore Prizes. The Blue Gate was a €‰finalist €‰for the Victorian Premier's Poetry Prize. Attempts at Being was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Poetry Prize and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the US. Her poetry has been set to music by several composers and she has written many libretti, including Mayakovsky, for an opera by Michael Smetanin, which was a finalist for the Victorian Premier's Awards Drama Prize, and The Riders, for Iain Grandage, which was named Choral/Vocal Work of the Year in the Australian Art Music Awards. She is the author of the popular fantasy series The Books of Pellinor. Other novels include The River and the Book, a finalist in the WA Premier's Awards and winner of the Environmental Writing for Children Award; Black Spring, a finalist in the NSW Premiers Literary Awards; and Navigatio. She is also a performance critic, and in 2009 was named the Geraldine Pascall Critic of the Year. She lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband, the playwright Daniel Keene, with whom she is co-writing a new speculative fiction series. Her†previous poetry collections are Theatre (Salt Publishing 2008), Torque (Ahahada Press, 2008), Ash (Cusp Books, Los Angeles 2005); November Burning (Vagabond Press Rare Objects Series, Sydney, 2004); The Common Flesh: New and Selected Poems (Arc Publications, UK, 2003), Attempts at Being (Salt Publishing, UK, 2002), Mnemosyne (Wild Honey Press, Ireland, 2001); The Blue Gate (Black Pepper Press, 1997) and This is the Stone (Penguin Books, 1991). For more information visit alisoncroggon.com