Michael Sharkey - Literary Activity

Literary Activity

Michael Sharkey is a biographer, poet and reviewer of Australian and New Zealand poetry and journalism, having published over 700 works. He established Fat Possum Press in Armidale NSW (1979-1986) with Winifred Belmont and with her, co-edited Trans-Tasman Undercurrent literary magazine in Melbourne (1986). His poems have appeared in literary anthologies, journals and newspapers in Australia, New Zealand, India, the UK, USA, Canada, Mexico, Italy, Syria, China and France.

He was poetry editor, later coordinating editor of the Australian literary journal Ulitarra from 1992-2001, and has guest-edited poetry issues of other magazines including Hobo and Famous Reporter. He has also worked as a free lance writer, editor and publisher's reader, and as a Writer in the Community for the Box Hill-Doncaster Regional Library in Victoria and the Blue Mountains City Library in New South Wales.

He was a regular book reviewer for the Australian Book Review, and the Australian and Courier Mail newspapers and has contributed biographical essays to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography and other publications.

He has conducted poetry seminars and read poetry at several German universities including RWTH (Aachen), Osnabrück, the Humboldt (Berlin), Trier, Munich, Kiel, and the Free University (Berlin). He has also been a guest poet and lecturer at London University and University College Dublin.

In recent years, he has read poetry at Australian literary events including the Victorian Arts Festival, the Queensland Poetry Festival, the Sydney Poetry Festical and the Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival. He has also served as a judge of State-sponsored literary awards for the Northern Territory and New South Wales.