Roles / Positions:

• Creative Director and Founder, Uplift Poetry (2024 – present)
• Founding Editor, #EnbyLife Journal (2016 – Present)
• Board member, Australian Poetry Board of Directors (2023 – Present)
• Events and Marketing Manager, Queensland Poetry (2021 – 2024)
• Advisor, The Caring Imagination (2021 – 2023) (currently on hiatus)
• 4ZZZ on-air radio announcer (2012 – 2016)

Qualifications/Memberships:

• Member, Institute of Community Directors
• Bachelor of Fine Arts (Creative Writing Production) – Queensland University of Technology

Photo credit: Chloë Callistemon.

About Rae:

Rae White is a non-binary transgender writer, educator and zine maker. Their poetry collection Milk Teeth (University of Queensland Press) won the 2017 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, was shortlisted for the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and commended in the 2018 Anne Elder Award.

Rae’s second poetry collection Exactly As I Am was published in 2022 by UQP. It was shortlisted for the 2023 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the 2023 Judith Wright Calanthe Award in the Queensland Literary Awards.

Rae’s Bitsy poem-game ‘stand up’ won the 2022 Woollahra Digital Literary Award for Digital Innovation, was featured in the Pride at Play exhibition 2023, was awarded an Honourable Mention in the 2024 Freeplay Awards, and was shortlisted in the 2023 Naarm/Melbourne Queer Games Festival Awards. Rae has also been shortlisted in both the 2021 and 2020 Woollahra Digital Literary Awards.

Rae is the Creative Director and Founder of community poetry initiative Uplift Poetry, and the Founding Editor of #EnbyLife, a journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives.

Rae has two poems published in Nothing to Hide – Voices of Trans and Gender-Diverse Australia (Allen & Unwin, 2022). Rae’s poem ‘The last tourist’ won the Highest Queensland Entry in 2020 Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award.  Rae’s poem ‘hussshhh’ won Highest Queensland Entry in the 2019 XYZ Prize for Innovation in Spoken Word. And their poem ‘what even r u?’ placed second in the 2017 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize.

In 2020, Rae completed a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship for their YA verse manuscript Welcome Home. Their short story ‘The Body Remembers’ placed second in 2019 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction.

Rae’s poetry has been published in Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, Meanjin Quarterly, Overland, Rabbit and others.

Rae holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Creative Writing Production) from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and previously worked at 4ZZZ community radio as an on-air announcer.

Rae is represented by Danielle Binks at Jacinta di Mase Management.