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Shapeshifting: First Nations Lyric Nonfiction
288 pages, Paperback
Published January 3, 2025
About the author
Ellen Van Neerven
39 books125 followersEllen van Neerven (they/them) is an award-winning author, editor and educator of Mununjali (Yugambeh language group) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, and non-fiction on unceded Turrbal and Yuggera land. van Neerven’s first book, Heat and Light (UQP, 2014), a novel-in-stories, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. van Neerven’s poetry collection Comfort Food (UQP, 2016) won the Tina Kane Emergent Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize. Throat (UQP, 2020) is the recipient of Book of the Year, the Kenneth Slessor Prize, and the Multicultural Award at 2021 NSW Literary Awards, and the inaugural Quentin Bryce Award.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 7, 2025
This is a cracking collection of stories that span a broad range of lived experience. While many are relatable I was especially chuffed to see palawa elder Jim Everett/puralia meenamatta tackle the topic of next steps toward Treaty after the unsuccessful 2023 Indigenous Voice referendum in his piece, Elephant in the Room.
Whoever needs to hear it, more books like this please.
Whoever needs to hear it, more books like this please.
September 30, 2026
Excellent collection of essays. Blurs formats between memoir, poetry, nonfiction, research deliberately to explore/expose truths that conventional academic writing suborns. Many are deeply moving.
Another collection with a Who’s Who of First Nations writers. At a minimum provides you with a list of folks to go read.
The core question pertains to what are Indigenous aesthetics and identity. The identity did not exist before colonial invasion (there wasn’t a concept of pan-Australia First Nation ness, there were First Nations) then is the identity perpetually stuck in the prism of colonialism? And if the identity is, are the cultural creations and aesthetics too? These are questions that recur across post-colonial writings with local specificity. Eduoard Glissants Fourth Century is a standout here. There are no easy answers.
These essays have some useful reminders. Decolonization requires the transfer of land, power, and control over production/surplus to people who lost it. They can then do what they want with it. Nothing else is decolonization. Aesthetic scaffolding around First Nations without this transfer just plays at settler innoncence/the erasure of colonial violence.
Black/Blak/brown writers have aesthetic freedom. The “Negro artist is free atop the racial mountain.” To only write a protest novel is to play Uncle Tom. (See Hughes/Wright/Baldwin). But can there be freedom under the colonial gaze? (DuBois double consciousness).
This collection of essays tries.
Another collection with a Who’s Who of First Nations writers. At a minimum provides you with a list of folks to go read.
The core question pertains to what are Indigenous aesthetics and identity. The identity did not exist before colonial invasion (there wasn’t a concept of pan-Australia First Nation ness, there were First Nations) then is the identity perpetually stuck in the prism of colonialism? And if the identity is, are the cultural creations and aesthetics too? These are questions that recur across post-colonial writings with local specificity. Eduoard Glissants Fourth Century is a standout here. There are no easy answers.
These essays have some useful reminders. Decolonization requires the transfer of land, power, and control over production/surplus to people who lost it. They can then do what they want with it. Nothing else is decolonization. Aesthetic scaffolding around First Nations without this transfer just plays at settler innoncence/the erasure of colonial violence.
Black/Blak/brown writers have aesthetic freedom. The “Negro artist is free atop the racial mountain.” To only write a protest novel is to play Uncle Tom. (See Hughes/Wright/Baldwin). But can there be freedom under the colonial gaze? (DuBois double consciousness).
This collection of essays tries.
February 2, 2026
🩷Shapeshifting: First Nations Lyric Nonfiction, edited by Jeanine Leane and Ellen van Neerven🩷
This is one of those collections that asks you to slow down, sit with the language, and let it work on you. So incredibly important, and so deeply moving.
The experimentation with form is a real highlight here with so many pieces coming to life on the page, bending and stretching what nonfiction can look like. That said, this is not a casual read. Some essays are quite dense, demanding your full attention, and I occasionally found myself needing to reread sections to fully grasp what the writer was expressing. But the payoff, absolutely worth it.
Shapeshifting is an essential read. It is a collection that doesn’t just showcase talent, it actively reshapes the literary landscape. Thought-provoking, innovative, and unapologetically complex, this is a book that stays with you long after the final page, and I highly recommend picking up a copy.
QOTD: Do you have an anthology that you recommend?
This is one of those collections that asks you to slow down, sit with the language, and let it work on you. So incredibly important, and so deeply moving.
The experimentation with form is a real highlight here with so many pieces coming to life on the page, bending and stretching what nonfiction can look like. That said, this is not a casual read. Some essays are quite dense, demanding your full attention, and I occasionally found myself needing to reread sections to fully grasp what the writer was expressing. But the payoff, absolutely worth it.
Shapeshifting is an essential read. It is a collection that doesn’t just showcase talent, it actively reshapes the literary landscape. Thought-provoking, innovative, and unapologetically complex, this is a book that stays with you long after the final page, and I highly recommend picking up a copy.
QOTD: Do you have an anthology that you recommend?
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews