Jennifer Compton

Jennifer Compton
Born	1949  Wellington
Occupation	Playwright, poet, short story writer

Jennifer Compton (born 1949) is a New Zealand-born Australian poet and playwright.

She was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1949. In the early 1970s she emigrated to Sydney, Australia with her husband Matthew O'Sullivan. They now live in Carrum in Melbourne.

After attending the NIDA Playwrights Studio, her play No Man's Land (later Crossfire) jointly won the Newcastle Playwriting Competition (with John Romeril's A Floating World) in 1974. It was premiered at the Nimrod Theatre in Sydney in 1975 and published by Currency Press in 1976.

Her stage play The Big Picture was premiered at the Griffin Theatre in Sydney in 1997 and was published by Currency Press in 1999.

She has mostly written short fiction and poetry. A book of poems, Parker & Quink, was published by Ginninderra Press in 2004, and another, Barefoot, was published by Picaro Press in 2010. Barefoot was short listed for the John Bray Poetry Award at the Adelaide Festival in 2012.

This City was published by Otago University Press in July 2011 and won the Kathleen Grattan Award in New Zealand.

Bibliography

Plays

• Morris, Meaghan, ed. (1976). Jennifer Compton's play Crossfire (No man's land) : the role of women in Australian society, with historical comment on women's suffrage, status and the politics of motherhood. Sydney: Currency Press.

Poetry

Collections

• Compton, Jennifer (1993). From the other woman. Wollongong, NSW: Five Islands Press and SCARP Productions.

List of poems

Title	Year	First published	Reprinted/collected
Dead playwrights	1995	Compton, Jennifer (October 1995). "Dead playwrights". Quadrant. 39 (10): 31.
Old friends	1995	Compton, Jennifer (October 1995). "Old friends". Quadrant. 39 (10): 32.

External links

• National Library of Australia Catalogue - http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn2385725 - http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1317255
• Jennifer Compton poem in Qualm