Peter Skrzynecki

Peter Skrzynecki has published twenty books of poetry and prose. He has won several literary prizes including the Captain Cook Bicentenary Award, the Grace Leven Poetry Prize and the Henry Lawson Short Story Award.  In 1989 he was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the Polish government and in 2018 received the Gold Cross of Merit from the Polish president. In 2002 he received the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his contribution to multicultural literature. Immigrant Chronicle, a book of poetry, was a set text for study on the New South Wales HSC syllabus for many years. His memoir The Sparrow Garden, was shortlisted for the National Biography Award; it is now available as an E-book. Old/New World: New & Selected Poems was published by UQP in 2007 and has become a set text on the VCE in Victoria. A second memoir, Appointment Northwest,  an account of life in a one-teacher school on the New England Tablelands in the 1960s  was published by Five Senses in 2014. A book of children’s poetry, The Rainbow Birds, was published by Five Senses in 2015 and a children’s story, The Dog with the Golden Paws  in 2018. A collection of essays called Of Human Experience about his life and poetry will be published by Boraga Academic in 2019. He is an adjunct associate professor in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University.