About Marcella Polain

Dr Marcella Polain was born in Singapore and immigrated to Perth when she was two years old, with her Armenian mother and Irish father. She has a background in theatre and screen writing.

Marcella was awarded her PhD in 2006 from the University of Western Australia. She lectured in the Writing programs at Murdoch University and University of Western Australia from 1995 until 2005, and then took up a position at Edith Cowan University where she remained until 2025. There, she supervised over 30 postgraduate Writing students to successful completion of their research degrees and was awarded the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research Supervision. Many of those students’ manuscripts (poetry, narrative fiction, memoir) found commercial publication. Outside her university work, Marcella has also mentored a number of emerging poets, working with them on their debut collections.

She was the founding Western Australian editor for the national poetry journal Blue Dog, has been poetry editor for Westerly and was inaugural editor for the WA journal Indigo. With Morgan Yasbincek, Tracy Ryan, Julia Lawrinson and Sarah French, Marcella co-founded WEB, a women’s reading which brought poets like Dorothy Porter and Gig Ryan to Perth.

Her writing has been published internationally and in translation, and she has been awarded the Gold Medal by the Writers’ Union of Armenia. Her publications include four poetry collections and two novels (some of which were supported by grants from the WA government and the Australia Council - now Creative Australia), as well as short stories and braided essays (on writing, and on belonging, including exile and inbetweenness).