Professor Sarah Holland-Batt

  • Professor Sarah Holland-Batt

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PhD (University of Queensland), Master of Philosophy English (Writing) (University of Queensland), Master of Fine Arts (MFA) (New York University), BArts Hons Class I (Literary Studies) (University of Queensland)

Professor Sarah Holland-Batt is an award-winning poet, editor and critic, and a member of QUT's Creative Writing faculty. Educated at New York University and the University of Queensland, she is the recipient of a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship, the W.G. Walker Memorial Fulbright Scholarship, residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell colonies in the United States, the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship, an Asialink Literature residency in Japan, and an Australia Council Literature Residency at the B.R. Whiting Studio in Rome, among other honours. In 2016, she was awarded the CHASS Australia Prize for Future Leader in the Humanities.

Her first book, Aria (UQP, 2008) was the recipient of a number of national literary awards, including the Thomas Shapcott Prize for Poetry, the Arts A.C.T. Judith Wright Poetry Prize and the F.A.W. Anne Elder Award, and was shortlisted in both the New South Wales and Queensland Premiers' Literary Awards for Poetry. Aria was also commended in The Age newspaper's 2009 Poetry Book of the Year prize, and was a set text on the VCE Literature curriculum from 2011-2014. Her second book, The Hazards (UQP, 2015) won the 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry, and was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, the AFAL John Bray Memorial Prize, the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, and the Queensland Literary Awards, and named as a Book of the Year in the Australian Book Review, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. Her third book of poems, The Jaguar, was published in 2022.

Holland-Batt's poems have been widely published in Australian and international literary journals and anthologies and have been translated into German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Bahasa Indonesian and Japanese; a Spanish translation of The Hazards, Los Peligros, was published with Vaso Roto (Spain and Mexico) in 2018. Holland-Batt was editor of Black Inc's The Best Australian Poems 2017 and The Best Australian Poems 2016, and the poetry editor of Island, one of Australia's leading literary journals, from 2014-2019. She also works as an advisor to many industry bodies, and is presently Chair of Australian Book Review. She researches in the area of contemporary Australian and American poetics, with particular interests in the lyric poem; ekphrasis, violence and the abject; and literary representations of ageing, death and aged care.

As a critic, she writes for publications including The Monthly and Australian Book Review, and she also contributes commentary, reportage and analysis on aged care issues for media outlets including ABC News, Q&A, 7:30, The Project, The Guardian, The Australian, Inside Story, Radio National and other forums. In 2020, supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas and the Copyright Agency, she was appointed as the Poet's Voice columnist at The Australian; a collection of the first 50 of her columns, Fishing For Lightning: The Spark of Poetry, was published by UQP in 2021. Holland-Batt was the first poet to be appointed as the Judy Harris Writer in Residence at the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney, an honour offered annually to a distinguished Australian writer whose work offers a literary perspective on health and chronic disease.

Additional information

Experience

Publishing Industry Engagement:

  • Chair, Australian Book Review (2020-)
  • Fulbright Commission Literature Committee (2019-)
  • Judge, Prime Minister's Literary Awards Fiction & Poetry Panel (2017-)
  • Board Director, Australian Book Review (2017-)
  • Peer, Australia Council for the Arts (2017-)
  • Board Director, Australian Poetry (2016-2017)
  • Coordinator, QUT-Queensland Poetry Festival Industry Partnership (2016-)
  • Poetry Editor, Island (2014-2019)
  • Inaugural W.D. Booth/Island Mentorship Scheme Mentor (2014)
  • Chair, Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize (2014-2019)
  • Judge, Queensland Literary Awards Unpublished Manuscript Prize (2014-2016)
  • Judge, Arts Queensland Val Vallis Poetry Prize (2013, 2014)
  • Australian Poetry National Advisory Council (2013, 2014)
  • Inaugural Mentor, Australian Poetry Mentorship Scheme (2013)
  • Brisbane Writers Festival Poetry Advisory Committee (2013)
  • Editorial Consultant, Atria Books, Simon & Schuster, New York (2011-2012)
  • Editorial Assistant, New Directions Publishing, New York (2010-2011)
  • Poetry Consultant, Hardie Grant Publishing, Melbourne (2009)

Selected Residencies and International Literary Festivals:

  • Chateau de Lavigny Fellowship, Lavigny, Switzerland (2017)
  • International Poetry Festival, Granada, Nicaragua (2017)
  • StAnza International Poetry Festival, St Andrews, Scotland (2016)
  • Buenos Aires International Poetry Festival, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2016)
  • Poetas Di(n)versos, A Coruna, Galicia, Spain (2016)
  • Fundación Vicente Risco, Allariz, Galicia, Spain (2016)
  • Yaddo Literature Residency, Saratoga Springs, New York, U.S.A. (2015)
  • Hawthornden Fellowship, Hawthornden Castle, Midlothian, Scotland (2014)
  • Mexico City International Poetry Festival, Coyoacan, Mexico (2014)
  • MacDowell Fellowship, MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire, U.S.A. (2013, 2015)
  • Yale Writer's Conference, New Haven, U.S.A. (2013)
  • Puisi International Poetry Festival, Java, Indonesia (2012)
  • International Poetry Festival, Granada, Nicaragua (2011)
  • Ledbury Poetry Festival, Ledbury, U.K. (2010)
  • Australia Council for the Arts Literature Residency, B.R. Writing Studio, Rome, Italy (2010)
  • Charles Sturt University Writer in Residence, Wagga Wagga, Australia (2009)
  • Asialink Literature Residency, Aichi Shukutoku University, Nagoya, Japan (2007)
  • Visiting Writer, Chukyo University, Nagoya, Japan (2007)
  • Dorothy Hewett Fellow, Varuna Writer's House, Katoomba, Australia (2007)

Awards

Type
Fellowships
Reference year
2021
Details
The Judy Harris Writer in Residence Fellowship at the Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney is awarded annually to a distinguished Australian writer who proposes a new major work that explores themes of relevance to the mission of the centre.
Type
Appointment to Prestigious Positions
Reference year
2020
Details
Chair of the Board, Australian Book Review
Type
Appointment to Prestigious Positions
Reference year
2020
Details
Appointed Poetry Columnist at The Australian
Type
Recipient of an Australia Council Grant or Australia Council Fellowship
Reference year
2019
Details
Recipient of an Arts Project for Individuals Grant ($50,000)
Type
Recipient of an Australia Council Grant or Australia Council Fellowship
Reference year
2018
Details
Project Funding, Literature ($31300)
Type
Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
Reference year
2016
Details
Winner, 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry, for The Hazards
Type
Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
Reference year
2016
Details
Winner, 2016 CHASS Australia Prize for Future Leader
Type
Fellowships
Reference year
2016
Details
Awarded a 2016 Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship ($160,000)
Type
Recipient of an Australia Council Grant or Australia Council Fellowship
Reference year
2015
Details
Australia Council New Work Fellowship ($40000)
Type
Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
Reference year
2010
Details
W.G. Walker Memorial Alumni Fulbright Scholarship

Completed Supervisions (Doctorate)

Completed Supervisions (Masters by Research)