Draft:Matt Chun

Chun's books include Australian Animals, Australian Mammals, Australian Sea Life, Australian Birds, Day Break (with Amy McQuire) and Pull It Down. His writing has been published in Overland, Meanjin, Runway, Liminal, and The Sunday Paper.^[1][2] His books have been shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards,^[3] the Children's Book Council of Australia Awards,^[4] and the Australian Book Design Awards.^[5]

Chun's artwork has been exhibited at the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, the S.H. Ervin Gallery,^[6] the Shirley Hannan National Portrait Award, the Nishi Gallery in Canberra,^[7] the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Sydney and the Wollongong Art Gallery.^[8][9]

He is a founding editor of The Sunday Paper, a newspaper he has described as "an art project and an act of protest".^[10] Its name is a play on The Saturday Paper, which Chun has accused of pro-Israel bias.^[11][12]

In 2019, he was appointed as the Children's Literature Fellow at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne.^[13] However, he cut ties with the library in April 2024, citing political differences over Gaza.^[14]

He has been the recipient of a number of grants from Creative Australia, including in 2017 to attend an artist's residency at the Bamboo Curtain Studio in Taiwan,^[15] and in 2023 to develop a children's picture book about policing in Australia with writer Amy McQuire.^[16][17]

In February 2024, Chun, with Clementine Ford, Randa Abdel-Fattah and others,^[18][19] published the membership list and transcripts of a 600-member WhatsApp group for Jewish Australian arts workers and academics, an incident that was widely cited in discussion of new Australian doxing laws introduced in 2024.^[20][21][22]

In August 2025, the Herald Sun reported that Chun had been investigated by Victorian state police over alleged terrorist links, following concerns raised by a former Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions. The investigations ended due to a lack of evidence.^[23]

In January 2026, two weeks after a terrorist attack at Bondi Beach in which fifteen people including a ten-year-old girl were killed while attending a Hanukkah celebration, Chun published an essay rejecting expressions of sympathy for the victims, whom he described as "fascists".^[24][25] Following the publication of this essay, it was reported that Dymocks bookshops had withdrawn Chun's books from sale^[26] and that his publisher, the University of Queensland Press, had suspended publication of his next book.^[27] It was reported that the NSW Police were investigating his remarks.^[28]

Chun was previously known as Matt Jones. He has written about his Chinese Australian ancestry and his decision to adopt the surname of his great-grandfather Phillip Jo Chun, who arrived in Australia in 1900.^[29][30]