Tony Birch

In 2017, he became the first Indigenous writer to win the Patrick White Award. His 2019 novel The White Girl won the 2020 Indigenous Writers' Prize of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

Tony Birch studied at University of Melbourne and Princes Hill Secondary College. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is literature, poetry and research. Distinctions recorded are Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

• Name — Tony Birch • Born — c.1957 • Birthplace — Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Occupation — Author, academic • Language — English • Education — University of Melbourne (PhD, 2003) • Awards — Patrick White Award • Years Active — 1989–present

Birch's maternal great-grandfather was an Afghani who migrated to Australia in 1890, who had to get exemption from the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 to take his daughter to the Punjab to meet his family. He also has Barbadian convict (James "Prince" Moodie, transported to Tasmania for 14 years for "disobedience") and Aboriginal heritage. Birch was born around 1957 and grew up around Fitzroy, a working-class suburb of Melbourne then considered a slum. After being expelled from school for the second time, he left school aged 15 and became a telegram boy.

After spending a decade as a firefighter, Birch attended the University of Melbourne as a mature student when he was 30 years old. He was the first Aboriginal student to graduate with a degree in history from the University of Melbourne, and the first to receive a Master of Arts in Creative Writing. In 2004 he was awarded the University of Melbourne Chancellor's Medal for the best PhD in Humanities and Creative Arts for his 2003 thesis "'Framing Fitzroy': contesting and (de)constructing place and identity in a Melbourne suburb".

He taught Aboriginal history for several years before switching to writing. Birch also worked as a senior curator for the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre at Melbourne Museum. Birch has appeared on ABC radio on shows such as Conversations, Life Matters and RN Afternoons. In 2015 he became the first recipient of the Dr Bruce McGuinness Indigenous Research Fellowship at Victoria University in Melbourne. His work involves academic research, creative writing projects, student mentoring, lecturing and community engagement. In 2019 he published the novel The White Girl. Birch was appointed to the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne in December 2022.

Birch is active in a variety of political and social movements, including climate justice, refugee issues and Indigenous issues. His novels integrate themes affecting Indigenous people, such as colonial oppression, dispossession, the Stolen Generations, and generational violence. He donates a portion of profits and prize money he receives to Seed Mob, an Indigenous youth organisation dedicated to climate justice.

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• |Year — Review article — Work(s) reviewed • 2021