The Board

Mr Martin Dolan

Chair/Treasurer

Martin Dolan, Director, (Canberra, ACT), is a poet who has been writing and publishing for twenty-five years, alongside a 36-year-long federal public service career, which included being CEO of the Australian Energy Markets Commission and the first Chief Commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. He directed the search for the missing Malaysia Airliner flight MH 370 and retired to write full time in 2016. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Canberra. Martin joined the Board in 2019.

 

Dr David Musgrave

Deputy Chair/Board Member

DM smlDavid Musgrave (Newcastle, NSW) is an award winning poet and publisher. He has published several books including To Thalia(Five Islands Press, 2004), On Reflection(Interactive, 2005), Watermark(Picaro, 2006) and Anatomy of Voice (GloriaSMH, 2016), which won the QLD Premier’s Poetry Prize, the Judith Calanthe Award. He has also won the Newcastle Prize (twice), the Grace Leven Prize and the Josephine Ulrick Prize. In addition he is founder and publisher of Puncher and Wattmann, which has published many significant Australian poets as well as fiction, criticism and biography. At present he teaches creative writing at the University of Newcastle. Joined Board in 2011 as a Foundation Board Member.

Ms Kate Stephens

Company Secretary

Kate Stephens (Adelaide, SA) is a senior Human Resources practitioner, with many years of experience at the Executive level.  At a professional level, Kate has a strong interest in organisational change, leadership development and culture creation.  Kate’s academic qualifications consist of a combined Arts/Law degree, with Arts majors in Philosophy and Classics, as well as post graduate qualifications in public sector management. Kate joined the Board in 2017.

 

 

Ms Yvette Holt

Board Member

Yvette Holt, Director, (QLD / NT), is current Chair of First Nations Australia Writers Network (FNAWN). A poet, academic, stand-up comedienne and photographer, she heralds from the Yiman, Bidjara and Wakaman Nations of Queensland. A multi-award winning poet, her poetry has been widely anthologised and translated. Yvette joined the Board in 2019.

 

Dr Bonny Cassidy

Board Member

Dr Bonny Cassidy (regional, Vic) lectures in Creative Writing at RMIT University. Her third collection of poems, Chatelaine (Giramondo) was shortlisted for the 2018 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Bonny’s critical essays on Australian poetry and culture have been widely published, and she’s presented her work at numerous festivals and fellowships internationally. Bonny joined the Board in 2020.

Dr Rory Dufficy

FRMSC Member/Board Member

Dr Rory Dufficy (Naarm/Melbourne, Vic) is a researcher and advisor currently working in Environment and Climate Change policy. He has degrees in History and Communications and received a Ph.D. from Western Sydney University in Comparative Literature. He has taught and lectured on poetry at universities in Australia, the UK, and the US, and has published poems and criticism in Australian Poetry Journal, Overland, Rabbit, Australian Book Review, The Sydney Morning Herald, Cordite, Colloquy, Australian and New Zealand Journal of European Studies and others. Rory joined the Board in 2020.

Mx Rae White

Board Member

Rae White (Brisbane, QLD) is a non-binary transgender writer and the award-winning author of poetry collections Milk Teeth (UQP, 2018) and Exactly As I Am (UQP, 2022). Their Bitsy poem-game ‘stand up’ won the 2022 Woollahra Digital Literary Award for Digital Innovation and was featured in the Pride at Play exhibition 2023. Rae is the founding editor of #EnbyLife, a journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives, and the Events and Marketing Manager at Queensland Poetry.  Rae joined the Board in 2023. Photographer credit: Chloë Callistemon

Dr Benjamin Laird

Board Member

Dr Benjamin Laird (Naarm/Melbourne) is an Asian Australian poet and software engineer. His print and electronic poetry have been published in various journals. His longer works include the digital chapbook The Durham Poems, which was included in the Electronic Literature Collection volume 4. He has twice been shortlisted for the QUT Digital Literature Award in the Queensland Literary Awards, in 2018 for ‘Core Values’, first read at the 2016 Melbourne Writers Festival as part of Australian Poetry’s Transforming My Country series, and in 2019 for ‘Psychometric Researches’, written for Red Room Poetry’s Poetry Object project. In 2020, as part of a response to the pandemic, he created ‘Panacea’, an interactive online collaborative poem for Red Room Poetry. He holds a PhD from RMIT University, where he has taught digital writing. He has spoken at the Sydney and Melbourne Writers Festivals on the topic of digital poetry, edited two electronic poetry issues of Overland, and co-edited a print issue of Australian Poetry Journal.  Benjamin joined the Board in 2023.