Alan Wearne

Who is Alan Wearne?

Alan Wearne is an Australian poet.

Alan Wearne was born and grew up in Melbourne. He studied history at Monash University where he met the poets Laurie Duggan and John A. Scott. After publishing two collections of poetry, he wrote a verse novel, The Nightmarkets, published in 1986 which won the Banjo Award and was adapted for performance.

His next book in the same genre, The Lovemakers, won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award. The first half of the novel was published by Penguin, and its second by the ABC in 2004 as The Lovemakers: Book Two, Money and Nothing and co-won The Foundation for Australian Literary Studies’ Colin Roderick Award and the H. T. Priestly Medal. Despite this critical success neither book was promoted properly and both volumes ended up being pulped. Shearsman Press in the UK has since republished the book in a single volume.

Alan Wearne's latest work, "The Australian Popular Songbook" was published in 2008 by Giramondo Publishing. He currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong.