Alexis Wright

She was the first person to win the Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Award in the same year. Wright has published four novels, one biography, and several works of nonfiction. Her work also appears in anthologies and journals.

Alexis Wright studied at RMIT University. The recorded working language is Australian English and English. The field of work recorded is literature. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are essay. Works named in the authority record are Carpentaria and Praiseworthy. Distinctions recorded are Miles Franklin Literary Award and Stella Prize.

• Name — Alexis Wright • Born — 25 November 1950 • Birthplace — Cloncurry, Queensland, Australia • Occupation — Author, novelist • Period — 1997–present • Genre — Fiction, non-fiction • Education — RMIT University • Notable Works — Carpentaria, Tracker, Praiseworthy • Honorific Suffix — FAHA • Awards — * Miles Franklin Award, 2007, 2024 • Stella Prize, 2018, 2024

Alexis Wright was born on 25 November 1950 in Cloncurry, Queensland, Australia. She is an Aboriginal Australian woman of the Waanyi nation in the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. Her father, a white cattleman, died when she was five years old. She grew up in Cloncurry with her mother and grandmother.

Wright has been a land rights activist. When the Northern Territory Intervention proposed by the Howard Government in mid-2007 was introduced, Wright delivered a high-profile 10,000-word speech, sponsored by International PEN.

Wright's first book was the novel Plains of Promise, published in 1997. She is also the author of non-fiction works. Take Power, on the history of the land rights movement, was published in 1998, and Grog War (Magabala Books) on the introduction of alcohol restrictions in Tennant Creek, published in 1997. Her second novel, Carpentaria, took two years to conceive and more than six years to write. It was rejected by every major publisher in Australia before independent publisher Giramondo published it in 2006. It went on to win several major prizes and excerpts of it, alongside, Plains of Promise is included in the Anthology of Aboriginal Literature (2008). In 2013 Wright's third novel, The Swan Book, was published. The book delves into the cultural and racial political challenges facing Australia's Indigenous peoples. Wright's book, Tracker, her tribute to the central Australian activist Tracker Tilmouth, was published by Giramondo in 2017. A biographical work variously characterised as unconventional and complicated, In the words of Ben Etherington: "It is a work, epic in scope and size, that will ensure that a legend of Central Australian politics is preserved in myth."

Wright is a Distinguished Research Fellow at Western Sydney University. She is a member of the Australian Research Council research project "Other Worlds: Forms of World Literature". Building on her success with Tracker, her theme for the project focuses on forms of Aboriginal oral storytelling. In 2017, Wright was named the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne.

* * * *

• "Le Pacte du serpent arc-en-ciel". [The Rainbow Serpent's Covenant] (trans. Marc de Gouvenain and Sylvie Kande; Acte Sud, 2002).

• Grog War (Magabala, 1997).. Review • Croire en l'incroyable. [Believing the Unbelievable] (trans. Sabine Porte, Marc de Gouvenain and Sylvie Kande; Actes Sud, 2000). • Tracker (Sydney: Giramondo, 2017).. (UK: And Other Stories, January 2025)

• Take Power, Like This Old Man Here: An anthology of writings celebrating twenty years of land rights in Central Australia, 1977–1997 (IAD, 1998).