Introduction
Emily Ballou is an Australian-American poet, novelist and screenwriter. Her award-winning poetry collection The Darwin Poems, a verse portrait of Charles Darwin, was published by University of Western Australia Press in 2009. It was written as part of an Australia Council for the Arts residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan, Ireland.
She wrote the "Anouk" and "Aisha" episodes of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's multi-award-winning, internationally acclaimed television mini-series The Slap (TV series), the original adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’ novel of the same name, which won the 2012 AWGIE Awards for Television Mini-Series (Adaptation). It was aired in the UK on BBC4 and nominated for a Royal Television Society Award, a BAFTA award and an International Emmy Award.
Ballou has also written episodes of Case Histories (series 2, "Nobody's Darling"), ITV's Scott & Bailey, Channel 4's Humans, BBC One's Taboo, National Geographic's TV movie American Blackout, co-written with Ewan Morrison, and "Family", directed by Shaun Gladwell in the anthology film The Turning adapted from Tim Winton's book of short stories and screened in the Berlinale Special Galas section of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival.
She is also the author of the novels Father Lands (Picador, 2002), Aphelion (Picador, 2007) and the picture book One Blue Sock (with illustrations by Stephen Michael King) (Random House, 2007).
Background
Emily Ballou was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She immigrated to Australia in 1991.She studied Film and English at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, graduating with a Bachelor in Fine Arts with Honours and completed a Master of Letters in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. She now lives in Scotland.
Awards and nominations
2010 – New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards: Shortlisted for The Darwin Poems
2010 – Western Australian Premier's Book Awards: Shortlisted for The Darwin Poems
2010 – Fellowship of Australian Writers Anne Elder Award: Highly Commended for The Darwin Poems
2010 – Australian Literature Society Gold Medal: Shortlisted for The Darwin Poems
2010 – Mary Gilmore Prize: Shortlisted for The Darwin Poems
2009 – Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize for The Darwin Poems
2003 – Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist for Father Lands
1997 – The Ibis Foundation's Judith Wright Prize for Poetry for the poem "Enter"
Anthologies
2010 – "The Beach",The Penguin Book of the Ocean
2010 – "Darwin as Metaphor", Journal 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, Birkbeck: University of London, No. 11, pp. 1–17.
2009 – "Here is a Hair From Her Head", Best Australian Short Stories
2008 – "On the Splice", Best Australian Short Stories