Samuel Wagan Watson hails from the honourable ancestors of the Birra-Gubba, Mununjali, Germanic and Gaelic peoples. His collection of poetry Of Muse, Meandering and Midnight won the 1999 David Unaipon Award. Since then he has written Hotel Bone (2001); Itinerant Blues (2002); Smoke Encrypted Whispers (2004), which won the New South Wales Premier’s Book of the Year and the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry; The Curse Words (2011); and Love Poems and Death Threats (2014). His work has been translated into seven languages, inspired various musical compositions, and has been the subject of film and television productions and visual art projects. In 2018 Samuel was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award.