Julie Janson: My Kaathi Sister

We are proud to announce the arrival of Julie Janson's debut poetry collection.

JULIE JANSON, a Burruberongal woman of Darug Aboriginal nation, who lives on the south coast of NSW, will be well-known to many as an acclaimed novelist and playwright. She has had ten plays produced professionally in Australia, Indonesia and USA. Gunjies was nominated for an AWGIE Award and received a Highly Commended Award from the Human Rights Commission; Eyes of Marege, a collaboration with Teater Kita Makassar, Ujung Pandang, was produced at the Sydney Opera House 2007 and the Adelaide Ozasia Festival. The Crocodile Hotel was shortlisted for the Patrick White Playwrights Award and the Griffin Award, 2010. 

Julie’s novel Compassion (Magabala, 2024), an Indigenous historical novel, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2025 and won the ACT Writers Centre prize. Madukka the River Serpent (UWA, 2022), an Indigenous crime novel, longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award 2023. Benevolence (Magabala, 2020), an Indigenous historical novel, was published in USA and UK by Harper Collins in 2022. It was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award 2022, and nominated for the NIB Literary Award 2020 and the Voss Literary Award 2020.  

Her poetry awards include the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize 2016 and the Judith right Poetry Prize 2019, and runner up in Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize 2025. Her poems have been published in Island, ABR and Overland.  My Kaathi Sister is her first poetry collection.

It tells a life--and many lives. Janson's book begins with childhood, and a tribute to her relationship  with her father, Neville.  This is one of several deep and enduring relationships--including those with her "Kaathi Sister", Jenny Ebbsworth, and with her beloved, troubled brother, Brian--which have anchored her and enabled her to survive the abuse, deprivation, discrimination and violence.  As we move through the book, particularities of autobiography and family merge with the mythic; the scope of imaginative sympathy expands, the  individual story becomes the story of the suffering and resilience of a people; until, ultimately, the circle of compassion expands to embrace "all God's creatures"--the victims of the Black Summer fires, a lost and bewildered stranger in an airport, an Indian beggar,  a starving dog.

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