ProfessorDavid Mccooey

David is a professor of literature and writing, and his areas of speciality are autobiography and poetry (especially in Australia). His Artful Histories: Modern Australian Autobiography was published by Cambridge University Press in 1996, the same year that the book was awarded a NSW Premiers Literary Award. With Maria Takolander, he co-edited the scholarly collection of essays, The Limits of Life Writing (Routledge, 2018). His publications on poetry include the 'Australia and New Zealand' chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Poetry (2017), the 'Poetry: 1970-2005' chapter in The Companion to Australian Literature (2007), the 'Autobiography' chapter in The Cambridge History of Australian Literature (2009), and the chapter on Les Murray in The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry (in press). He is the author of ‘The Public Life of Australian Poetry’ in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (2018). David has also written numerous essays and reviews for scholarly and general publications such as Criticism, Biography, Southerly, Meanjin, Westerly, Australian Book Review, The Conversation, The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and JASAL.

David has been the co-recipient of a number of ARC Grants, including a Discovery Grant on 'Australian literature and the public sphere'. He is an editorial board member of Life Writing and Antipodes: The North American Journal of Australian Literature. He has been a guest at a number of literary festivals, including the Melbourne Writers Festival, the Sydney Writers Festival, and the Perth Festival (Writers' Week). In 2006 he was the co-recipient (with Professor Jill Roe and Professor Nicholas Jose) of an ARC Linkage Grant (of $240 000) for the project The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, of which David is the Deputy General Editor. The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature was published in 2009 and in 2010 it won the 'Special Award' in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

David is also a prize-winning poet. His first book of poetry, Blister Pack (Salt Publishing, 2005) won the Mary Gilmore Award (for a first book of poetry) and was short-listed for four major awards, including The Melbourne Prize for Literature (New Writing Award), Australia's richest literary award. A fine-press chapbook, Graphic: Two Sequences, appeared in 2010. His second full-length collection, Outside, was published by Salt Publishing in 2011. It was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards and it was a Finalist for the Melbourne Prize for Literature's $30 000 Best Writing Award in 2012. His subsequent collections are Star Struck (2016, UWA Publishing) and The Book of Falling (Upswell, 2023). His poetry has also appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Age, Southerly, Australian Book Review, The Best Australian Poems 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 and The Best Australian Poetry 2007. In 2013 he was the first Poetry Editor of Australian Book Review.