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Alison Croggon was born in 1962 in South Africa to English parents. When she was four, her family returned to England, and then migrated to Australia when she was seven, where she has lived ever since. She is considered a major figure in the generation of Australian poets that emerged in the 1990s, but writes in many genres, including criticism, theater, and prose. Most recently, with the publication of the acclaimed series The Books Of Pellinor, she has become known as a writer of fantasy.
She has published seven collections of poetry, and her poems have been published widely in anthologies and magazines in Australia and elsewhere. Ash, a forty-page chapbook was published by Cusp Books in Los Angeles, and a new full collection was published by Salt Publishing in 2008. Attempts At Being was short-listed for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and also was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the U.S. In 2002, 2003, and 2005 she toured the U.K., where she participated in the Poetry International Festival at Royal Festival Hall in London and Soundeye International Poetry Festival in Cork.
The year 2002 saw the publication of Alison Croggon’s first fantasy novel for young adults, The Naming, which was nominated in two categories in the Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction in December 2002 and named one of the Notable Books of 2003 by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. Publication in the U.K. and the U.S. followed swiftly, with German editions published in 2007/08. The Naming was picked as one of the Top Ten Books for Teens in 2005 by Amazon.com. Alison Croggon maintains a writing blog on her website where readers can discover more about the Books of Pellinor’s creation and development.
Alison Croggon has written and had performed nine works for theater, including operas and plays, which have been produced at major international theater festivals in Australia. Many of her poems have been set to music by various composers, including Michael Smetanin, Christine McCombe, Margaret Legge-Wilkinson, and Andreé Greenwell.
She was the 2000 Australia Council writer in residence at Pembroke College, Cambridge University, U.K. She was poetry editor for Overland Extra (1992), Modern Writing (1992–1994) and Voices (1996) and is founding editor of the literary arts journal Masthead. She also has a passion for theater, and as well as running a respected theatre blog, Theatre Notes, she is the Melbourne theatre critic for the Australian, Australia’s only national daily newspaper.
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