Ruby Moonlight

A verse novel that centres around the impact of colonisation in mid-north South Australia around 1880. Ruby, refugee of a massacre, shelters in the woods where she befriends an Irishman trapper. The poems convey how fear of discovery is overcome by the need for human contact, which, in a tense unravelling of events, is forcibly challenged by an Aboriginal lawman. The natural world is richly observed and Ruby's courtship is measured by the turning of the seasons.

Awards

• Winner, 2013 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Book of the Year
• Winner, 2013 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize
• Winner, 2012 Black&Write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship
• Winner, 2012 Deadly Awards, Outstanding Achievement in Literature

About the Author

Ali Cobby Eckermann is a Yankunytjatjara poet and artist from South Australia whose work has been published and celebrated around the world. Her poetry collections include little bit long time and the award-winning collection Inside My Mother. Her verse novels are His Father's Eyes and Ruby Moonlight, which won the inaugural black&write! Indigenous fellowship, the Kenneth Slessor Prize, a Deadly Award and was named the NSW Premier's Literary Award Book of the Year. In 2013 Ali toured Ireland as Australia's Poetry Ambassador, and in 2017 she received the Windham-Campbell Prize from Yale University.

She describes herself as a dreamer, a gardener, with deep respect for her journey thus far.