The Committee

Kit Kelen

President, Public Officer & Pocket Poets Series Editor

Christopher (Kit) Kelen, FRSN
Emeritus Professor of English (University of Macau)
Conjoint Professor in the School of Humanities & Social Science (University of Newcastle)

And of course author, widely published poet and visual artist

Maggie Ball

Vice-President

Author, published poet and reviewer. Maggie is the editor of Compulsive Reader, publishing high-quality, magazine-style reviews since 2001

Josh Stenberg

Secretary

Josh Stenberg obtained his B.A. from Harvard College, his M.A. from the University of British Columbia, and his PhD in Chinese Theatre from Nanjing University. He was a Fulbright Taiwan fellow and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow in Theatre and Film before taking up his current position at the University of Sydney as a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies

John Burke

Treasurer

John is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand with over 35 years of experience as a chartered accountant.

John is the principal of Not-for-Profit Bookkeeping which specialises in accounting and governance for charities and community groups. John’s incorporated chartered accounting practice is also a registered BAS Agent

He is also the Chief Financial Officer of CrashClaim Accident Management

Brian Purcell

Committee Member

Brian is a poet and painter based in Bellingen on the mid-north coast of NSW.

He became involved in community literature, as a voluntary secretary then president of the Poets Union Inc, and continued to publish in Australian magazines such as Meanjin, Imago, Hobo, Rant, Scarp and Southerly, and in anthologies such as Australian Love Poems (Inkerman and Blunt).

Anthony Cordingley
Committee Member

Anthony Cordingley is ARC Discovery Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of English, University of Sydney, on secondment from the Université Paris 8 – Vincennes-Saint-Denis, where he is Associate Professor in English and Translation Studies.

Dael Allison
Committee Member

Dael Allison writes poetry, essays and fiction and is a Doctoral candidate in creative writing, University of Newcastle. Poems from her book Fairweather’s Raft (Walleah Press) featured on Poetica, ABC radio. She has edited and published numerous anthologies, most recently Brew, 30 years of Poetry at the Pub, Newcastle (2018).