Gaele Sobott

Gaele Sobott (born 1956), also known as Gaele Sobott-Mogwe, is an Australian short-film maker and author of poetry, short stories, non-fiction and children's books.

Life Gaele Sobott was born in 1956 in Yallourn, Victoria, Australia. Her parents were working class members of the Eureka Youth League, and life-long trade unionists.

In 1978, after working for a year in Athens, Greece, she moved to Botswana and lived there for the larger part of her life.

Gaele did her undergraduate degree, majoring in English and History, at the University of Botswana. She completed her PhD, a bio-bibliographical study of Twentieth Century Black South African women writers, at the University of Hull, England.

She is a disability activist and is the founding director of Outlandish Arts, a disabled-led arts organisation.

She currently lives in Sydney, Australia.

Career

Gaele’s first short stories were published by the South African anti-Apartheid literary and cultural magazine, Staffrider, and her first children’s book was published by Baobab Press, Zimbabwe. Her children's book Thara Meets the Cassipoohka Man received the Zimbabwe Award for Children's Literature.

Heinemann African Writers Series published her first collection of short stories, Colour Me Blue, which blends fantasy and reality, melding African history and tradition with the grittiness of everyday life in Botswana. The stories capture the oppression of men and women, the tenderness of human affection and the powerful rhythm of African myth.

Gaele worked with Australian First Nations boxer, Wally "Wait-a-While" Carr to write a vivid account of his life in the literary biography My Longest Round, published by Magabala Books. Wally Carr held 12 titles in six divisions and fought an astonishing 101 professional bouts in his 15-year boxing career.

Gaele was the editor of Young Days: Bankstown Aboriginal Elders Oral History Project, published in 2013.

Gaele's short stories and poems appear in various literary magazines and anthologies, such as the Anchor Book of Modern African Stories, Botswana Women Write and Not Quite Right For Us. Her more recent essays, short stories and poems appear in literary magazines including, Rabbit Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, Sydney Review of Books, Meanjin, The Suburban Review, Plumwood Mountain, Cordite Poetry Review, New Flash Fiction Review, New Contrast, Disability Arts Online, Australian Women Writers Challenge, Wasafiri, Otway Journal and Hecate.

Sobott's animated poems have been screened at numerous international film festivals and have won several awards.