Cirrus@Austlit

Leni Shilton is a poet, teacher and researcher. She grew up in Papua New Guinea and Melbourne and has lived in Mparntwe | Alice Springs for thirty-five years (as of 2022). She has worked in bush nursing, prison education, Indigenous tertiary education, and in domestic violence community development work.

Her writing is regularly published in journals and anthologies in Australia and internationally. She has a PhD in Creative Writing. Leni was a founding member of Ptilotus Press (now Running Waters Community Press), a community-based small press located in central Australia.

Leni has written two verse novels: Walking with Camels : The Story of Bertha Strehlow (UWAP, 2018), and Malcolm : A Story in Verse (UWAP, 2019). In 2020, Leni was a guest of the Perth Festival for Literature & Ideas, and the NT Writers Festival in Darwin. Her verse novel Walking with Camels won the 2020 NT Chief Ministers Fiction Book Award.

Leni is a regular judge of national literary awards including the 2020 Stella Prize and the 2021/22 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript with UWA Publishing. In 2021, she received a Varuna/Arts NT Virtual Fellowship, and in 2022 she received a KSP Residential Fellowship and an Arts NT development grant.

Her writing focuses on the power of writing landscape and place in poetry, giving voice to the unheard, the silenced, and exploring issues of mental health and depression. Her literary and professional careers have coalesced with a focus on supporting and enabling people to tell their stories.