Born in Papua New Guinea to an Australian English dad and Bush Mekeo mother and brought up in Tasmania, Australia from the age of one, June Perkins is the editor and contributor to two books, Under One Sky (2010) the anthology of the Licuala Writer’s Group After Yasi, Finding the Smile Within (2013), a compilation of photographs and stories about using the creative arts to recover from cyclone Yasi. June also had a collection of her photographs and poems for family and her biography included in an online book by the late Nell Arnold, called Discovering (2011).
June has had many pieces published by ABC Open, and was a guest blogger for the Aftermath disaster project; she submitted photographs, blogs, and video stories to this and other projects of ABC Open. She worked for six months as guest producer/editor, on a project called 500 words to mentor other producers in how to run a creative trigger project .In 2012, she was awarded an Australia Day senior cultural award for her services to writing in the cassowary coast over several years, where in addition to contributing to ABC Open in the aftermath of cyclone Yasi she served as a writing group coordinator, project managed two writing projects, and was involved in mentoring Indigenous women and youth of all backgrounds. The Northern Queensland life became a major muse for her writing during this time.
In 2016 she had a major breakthrough with writing in a new genre which she had been working at for two years through Write Links, a writing group focused on writing for children and young adults, and received an ASA mentorship for picture book text writing. During 2016 she has been working with Robyn Sheahan Bright to prepare and develop her picture book texts for possible publication. At the same time as this she successfully raised money, through crowd funding, to publish a full colour illustrated poetry book for children set in Far North Queensland, Magic Fish Dreaming. This book is now in the process of being distributed, and was officially launched in October. Her picture books which she hopes to publish in the future reflect her love of poetry and language and she has a poetic style in almost every kind of writing she does, something she has learnt to accept is just part of who she is.
The writing of Magic Fish Dreaming began when June ran a project called ‘Ripple’ combining poetry, photography and community, in 2007, and established a blog to go with it, ripplepoetry.wordpress.com. However she began her public poetry career in Tasmania at 14, reading at the Poetry Cup there, and returned in 1995 as an invited guest poet. She also read with other Indigenous Pacific writers at a Sydney festival in the late ’90s at the invitation of Gadigal Information services.
June’s published works span a vast array of genres: poetry, drama, short memoir pieces, photography, video, interviews, articles on writing and kickstarters, blog, blog group adventures, and her PhD completed at the University of Sydney in 2004. She has read her poems on radio and publicly at open and group readings and festivals, and been published in literary, media and community publications, anthologies, and newspapers. These include Etchings, Voice of the North, and Writing the Pacific to name but a few. She is now delighted to be working on longer more sustained works and full length books, and yes some of them are poetry!
You can contact June Perkins via her blog
http://magicfishdreaming.wordpress.com
@gumbootspearlz
She keeps a poetry inspirations pinboard as well
https://au.pinterest.com/magicfishdream/
Australian Children’s Poetry 