Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian writer and illustrator of Afro-Caribbean descent.
Born in Sydney, Australia to Black British parents, Clarke grew up in Kellyville. Her memoir, The Hate Race, details incidences of racism she and her siblings endured growing up in the mostly white suburb.
Clarke attended the University of Wollongong, earning a Bachelor of Creative Arts and a law degree. Clarke's debut book was a poetry collection in 2008, which she has followed with short stories, an autobiography, picture books, and books for early readers. Clarke has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Melbourne Prize for Literature Civic Choice Award in 2021.
Totaling 272 pages, "Foreign Soil" and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction. Set all across the world -- from Africa, to London, to the United States, to the West Indies, to Australia -- this collection gives a voice to those without one...
Maxine Beneba Clarke's The Hate Race is a 2016 memoir about growing up Black in a mostly white suburb of Sydney, Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. Covering her early childhood to the end of high school, Clarke details the near-constant racist...
