Sharlene Allsopp was born and raised on unceded Bundjalung Country into the Olive mob.

She was a 2020/21 fellow with The Wheeler Centre’s Next Chapter program, during which she completed her novel The Great Undoing, which won the QLD Literary Award for Fiction Book of the Year 2024 (Ultimo Press). She has been published in Griffith Review, Jacaranda Journal, Portside Review, and Aniko Press and is the University of Queensland’s 2021 Ford Memorial poet.

In 2015 she co-founded a charity for domestic violence survivors, is obsessed with World Tour cycling, and currently lives in Meanjin with her husband, sons and daughters, and the darling of her life—a naughty, fluffy puppy called Morty.

Sharlene is a casual academic at the University of QLD and will complete her Masters in creative writing in early 2026.