Melinda Smith is a poet, editor, teacher, translator, performer and part-time lawyer. Her latest book is Man-handled (Recent Work Press, 2020). She is the author of seven other poetry books, including the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Award winner, Drag down to unlock or place an emergency call, and her work has been widely anthologised and translated.

Recently she co-edited the Australian Poetry Anthology Vol. 8 with Sara Saleh, and Borderless: A Transnational Anthology of Feminist Poetry with Saba Vasefi and Yvette Holt. She helped organise the Canberra poetry reading series 'That Poetry Thing' from 2017 -2020, is a former poetry editor of The Canberra Times, and lives and writes on unceded Ngunnawal and Ngambri country.