Dog-Eared Readings

A literary event of readings and discussion featuring award-winning poet Jill Jones in conversation with Aidan Coleman and readings from Ashley Kalagian Blunt and Amelia Walker.

The Dog-Eared Readings is a regular literary event that brings a curated selection of writers together for an evening of high-calibre readings and discussion. 

Our featured writer is award-winning poet and national treasure Jill Jones who will be in conversation with Aidan Coleman.

Hot off the success of winning 2026 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards for her latest collection How to Emerge, we're excited to welcome Jill Jones to the Dog-Eared stage. Jill has won or been shortlisted in a cavalcade of Australian poetry awards. One of her most recent books Acrobat Music: New and Selected Poems was shorted listed for the 2024 South Australian Literary Awards, longlisted for the 2024 ALS Gold Medal and commended in the 2023 Wesley Michel Wright Prize. Other recent books include Wild Curious Air, winner of the 2021 Wesley Michel Wright Prize, and A History Of What I’ll Become, shortlisted for the 2021 Kenneth Slessor Award and the 2022 John Bray Award. In 2015 she won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry for The Beautiful Anxiety. Her work is widely published in Australia and internationally. An entry on her poetry is included in the current edition of The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English.

Jill will be chatting with poet Aidan Coleman, who is also no slouch when it comes to award-winning poetry. Aidan is a Senior Lecturer at Southern Cross University on the Gold Coast, and the coordinator for Creative Writing. He is the author of three books of poetry, which have been shortlisted for national awards. A biography, Thin Ice: A life of John Forbes, is in press with Melbourne UP.  Aidan is the poetry editor for Social Alternatives and TEXT.

We're incredibly lucky to catch the fabulous crime writer Ashley Kalagian Blunt while she's in town. Ashley writes to expose the myriad ways our technology makes us vulnerable. She is the number one bestselling author of Dark Mode, which was shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year, the Ned Kelly Awards for Best Crime Fiction, and the Danger Award for Debut Fiction. She co-hosts James and Ashley Stay at Home, a podcast about creativity, writing and health, and teaches writing workshops across Australia. Her latest thrillers are Cold Truth, which was also shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Awards, and Like, Follow, Die. She’s beyond delighted to be the first crime writer to appear at Dog-Eared. 

And we're extremely excited to have the brilliant poet and academic Amelia Walker round out this incredible night. Amelia has published five poetry collections, most recently Alogopoiesis (Life Before Man / Gazebo Books).* Her sixth is forthcoming in the new Life Before Man / Gazebo Books short poems series. She is also the author of Reading and Writing for Change: Theories and Tools for Confronting Power (Bloomsbury Academic) and co-editor of Ludic Inquiries into Power and Pedagogy in Higher Education: How Games Play Us (published by Routledge, co-editors Helen Grimmett and Ali Black). She lectures in creative writing at Tirkangkaku / Adelaide University.