Laurie Duggan was born in Melbourne and lives in Brisbane. He has published ten books of poems includingThe Ash Range, which won the Victorian Premier’s New Writing Award;The Epigrams of Martial, winner of the Wesley Michael Wright Prize; andNew and Selected Poems 1971–1993. His cultural historyGhost Nation: Imagined Space and Australian Visual Culture, 1901–1939(UQP, 2001) received Special Mention as an outstanding contribution to Australian Culture in the Centre for Australian Cultural Studies national awards. Mangroves (2003) is Duggan’s most recent UQP title. It won the 2004 ALS gold medal for outstanding work was awardedThe AgePoetry Book of the Year award in… 2003.