That Poetry Thing that Is On At Smiths Every Other Monday Night continues to bring the best of Canberran writers, and this night proves to be a special event.

Paul Collis joins JC Inman to discuss his novel Dancing Home, and his journey as a writer and other topics such as writing craft, the genre of 'Koori-noir' and the truths behind it.

The night is opened by Professor Peter Raddoll, Director of teh Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre 

"Dancing Home is the winner of last year’s David Unaipon Award for an unpublished manuscript by an Indigenous writer, and in its opening pages, author Paul Collis invites the reader to be ‘active’ while reading the novel, to ‘take sides’ and to ‘think about poverty, power, privilege, suicide, and Aboriginal deaths in custody’." - Deborah Crabtree, Readings 

Paul Collis is a Barkindji man, born in Bourke in far western NSW on the Darling River. Paul worked in Newcastle for much of his young adult life in the areas of teaching and in Aboriginal community development positions. He has taught Aboriginal Studies to Indigenous inmates at the Worimi and Mount Penang juvenile detention centres and in Cessnock and Maitland prisons. Paul has a Bachelor of Arts degree and a doctorate in Communications. He lives in Canberra and works as a Creative Writing academic at the University of Canberra. Dancing Home is his first novel and won the national 2016 David Unaipon Award for a previously unpublished Indigenous writer.