Jennifer Maiden (born 7 April 1949) is a contemporary Australian poet.
Jennifer Maiden was born in Penrith, New South Wales. She began publishing professionally in the late 1960s and has been active in Sydney's literary scene since then. She took a BA at Macquarie University in the early 1970s. Aside from writing she runs writers workshops with a variety of literary, community and educational organizations and has co-written (with Margaret Cunningham) a manual of questions to facilitate writing by Torture and Trauma Victims.
Among Jennifer Maiden's many accolades are three Kenneth Slessor Prizes for Poetry, the C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry, the Harri Jones Memorial Prize, the H.M. Butterly-F.Earle Hooper Award(University of Sydney), the Grenfell Henry Lawson Festival Prize, the FAW Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry, two The Melbourne Age Poetry Book of the Year awards, and The Melbourne Age Book of the Year as such. She has had residencies at the Australian National University, the University of Western Sydney, Springwood High School and the New South Wales Torture and Trauma Rehabilitation Service. She has been awarded several Fellowships by the Australia Council.
Her second novel Play With Knives has been translated into German as Ein Messer im Haus (dtv, 1994).
Her latest collection, Pirate Rain, won The Melbourne Age Poetry Book of the Year in 2010 and the N.S.W. Premier's Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in 2011. She is the only writer to have won the Kenneth Slessor Prize three times.
In October 2011, the Australian magazine of politics, society and culture, The Monthly, listed her poetry collection, Friendly Fire (2005), as the poetry book in their selection of 20 Australian Masterpieces since 2000, when they asked 20 Australian art critics to identify "the most significant work of art in their field since 2000".[1]
Each year links to corresponding "[year] in poetry" or "[year] in literature"