Dorothy Porter (1954-2008) was an Australian poet, author and librettist. She won numerous awards, including the 2006 Melbourne Prize for Literature, the 2001 FAW Christopher Brennan Award, and the 1994 Dinny O’Hearn Poetry Prize. Two of her verse novels were shortlisted in the Miles Franklin Award: What a Piece of Work (2000) and Wild Surmise (2003). The final publication before her death from cancer at age fifty-four was El Dorado, a verse novel that was nominated for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2007 and Best Fiction in the Ned Kelly Awards.