Surrounded by Gould’s birds, Jan Dean reads ‘Seraphine Speaks’, her poem which won the Hunter Writers Centre Member’s Prize in the 2015 Newcastle Poetry Prize. Photo by Martin Kent.

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Rochford Street Review was saddened to learn of the death recently of Jan Dean. With permission we republish the tribute to Jan by Clark Gormley which first appeared in Hunter Living Histories https://hunterlivinghistories.com/2025/05/12/vale-jan-dean/.

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Vale Jan Dean

Jan Dean, Newcastle writer and artist, has died. She was a life-member and former president of Poetry at the Pub.  She had been involved in that group since 1997.

Prizes & Accolades

Jan won the 2018 Newcastle Writers Festival joanne burns Microlit Award for her prose poem ‘Fish Flops and Flaps’ published in Shuffle by Spineless Wonders. She was awarded the Seniors’ Prize sponsored by Baytree by Ardency at the 2019 Lane Cove Literary Awards with ‘Moss Poem’. She held a Distinguished Service Award from FAW NSW. Her With One Brush (IP, Queensland) was short-listed for the Mary Gilmore Award and her pocketbook Paint Peels, Graffiti Sings, (Flying Island Books, Macau) is in English and Mandarin.

Published Works

Her work has been published in Not Very Quiet (online), Southerly, Meanjin, Rabbit Poetry Journal, The Australian, Eucalypt: a tanka journal, and Newcastle Poetry Prize anthologies.

Memorial

A memorial will be held for Jan when the family arrange it in the near future.

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