About Claire

Claire Corbett was born in Canada and moved to Australia as a child. She studied film and writing at the University of Technology, Sydney, and crewed on films before becoming a policy advisor to the Premier in the NSW Cabinet Office. She worked on water and genetically modified organisms for the Environment Protection Authority and child and family health for NSW Health.

Claire has had stories, essays and journalism broadcast on Radio National and published in Splash (Penguin), Re:Publica (A&R), Cinema Papers, Rolling Stone, Picador New Writing, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Monthly, Griffith Review and Southerly among others.

WHEN WE HAVE WINGS, a novel about humans genetically engineered to fly, was published by Allen & Unwin in July 2011. It was shortlisted for the 2012 Barbara Jefferis Award and shortlisted for the 2012 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction.

WHEN WE HAVE WINGS is also published in Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands and Russia and has been released worldwide as an audiobook by Bolinda Publishing.

Her essay The Last Space Waltz: 2001 and NASA, was shortlisted for the 2012 ABR/CAL essay prize and published in Overland, Autumn 2014. Her story Snake in the Grass was selected for Best Australian Stories 2014. 2 or 3 Things I Know About You was selected for Best Australian Stories 2015.

She was awarded a residency at Writers Omi at Ledig House in upstate New York for Oct-Nov 2014 and a Bundanon residency in January 2017. Her paper Must Australia Always Be Imaginary? Cartography as Creation in Peter Carey’s “Do You Love Me?” was published in Antipodes: a global journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature in June 2015.

WATCH OVER ME, her second novel, is published by Allen & Unwin May 2017.