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Peter Polites Peter Polites i(6310501 works by)
Gender: Male
Heritage: Greek
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BiographyHistory

Writer from Western Sydney.

Associate Director of SWEATSHOP (a Western Sydney literacy movement focused on marginalised communities), Polites has performed his own works across Australia, including Three Jerks (2014), a spoken-word piece influenced by the Cronulla riots, co-authored with Luke Carman and Michael Mohammed Ahmad, which was performed in both Sydney and Melbourne.

As an editor, Polites produced Ornaments from Two Countries: GLBTIQ Stories od Difference from Western Sydney and Regional NSW.

His first novel, Down the Hume, was published in early 2017. His play, Steps into Katouna, about migrant experience in Western Sydney, was commissioned for the 2017 Sydney Festival, where it was performed as part of Home Country, triptych of plays about identity, staged in a multi-level carpark in Blacktown (the other plays were Andrea James's Blacktown Angel and Gaele Sobott's Zaphora and I). Polites is also the co-writer of the web series ILUVUBUT.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2011 recipient Australia Council Grants, Awards and Fellowships Writing workshops with GLBTIQ people from Western Sydney and Regional NSW to create a publication.

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon God Forgets About the Poor Ultimo : Ultimo Press , 2023 26211432 2023 single work novel

'I will tell you why you should draft my story. Because migrant stories are broken. Some parts in a village where we washed our clothing with soot. Some parts in big cities working in factories. How we starved for food in Greece and starved for Greece in Australia.

'You don’t know the first thing about me. A son can never see his mother as a woman. You will only see me in relation to you. I have had a thousand lives before you were even a thought. Hospitalised as a child for an entire year. Living as an adult without family in Athens when the colonels took control.

'Start when I was born. Describe the village and how beautiful it was. On the side of a mountain but in the middle of a forest. If we walked to a certain point on the edge, we could look over the valley and see rain clouds coming. Sometimes we would see a cat on a roof, we read that as a warning of a storm. When we looked down, we saw the dirt, which was just as rich as the sky. My island, your island, our island.

'Sometimes I think God forgot about us because we were poor.

'A stunning new novel from the author of Down the Hume and The PillarsGod Forgets About the Poor is a love story to a migrant mother, whose story is as important as any ever told.'(Publication summary)

2024 longlisted Indie Awards Fiction
y separately published work icon The Pillars Sydney : Hachette Australia , 2019 15595396 2019 single work novel

'Don't worry about the housing bubble, she would say. Don't worry about the fact that you will never be able to afford a home. Worry about the day after. That's when they will all come, with their black shirts and bayonets, and then you will see the drowned bodies and slit necks. And I would stand there and say, But Mum, I'm ten years old.

'Working as a writer hasn't granted Panos the financial success he once imagined, but lobbying against a mosque being built across the road from his home (and the occasional meth-fuelled orgy) helps to pass the time. He's also found himself a gig ghostwriting for a wealthy property developer. The pay cheque alone is enough for him to turn a blind eye to some dodgy dealings - at least for the time being.

'In a world full of flashy consumerism and aspiration, can Panos really escape his lot in life? And does he really want to?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2020 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Multicultural NSW Award
2020 shortlisted APA Book Design Awards Best Designed Literary Fiction / Poetry Cover designed by Josh Durham, Design by Committee
The Final Boys 2018 single work short story
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 77 no. 1 2018; (p. 76-81)
2020 winner The Woollahra Digital Literary Award Fiction
Last amended 2 Jul 2018 14:53:05
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