Alexis Wright

Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The author of the prize-winning novels Praiseworthy, Carpentaria and The Swan Book, Wright has published three works of non-fiction: Take Power, an oral history of the Central Land Council; Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in the Northern Territory; and Tracker, an award-winning collective memoir of Aboriginal leader, Tracker Tilmouth. Her books have been published widely overseas, including in China, the US, the UK, Italy, France and Poland. She held the position of Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne between 2017–2022. Wright has won a number of literary awards, including the Miles Franklin Award for Carpentaria, the Stella Prize for Tracker, and a Queensland Literary Award for Praiseworthy, which was also shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, one of the world’s richest literary prizes. She is the inaugural winner of the Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.

(photograph by Vincent L. Long))

Alexis Wright on the sovereign time of Country

October 2023, no. 458 • 22 September 2023

I have often spoken of trying to write in some meaningful way about what it means to belong to all times in this place that we call our traditional homeland. Aboriginal people know that we have been here since time immemorial. We have never lost track of the wisdom and knowledge that generations of our ancestors had developed over thousands of years about the powerful nature of this country. It wa ... (read more)

Alexis Wright reviews 'Snake Cradle: Autobiography of a black woman' by Roberta Sykes

November 1997, no. 196 • 01 November 1997

Snake Cradle: Autobiography of a black woman is the first published volume of a three-part life story from Australia’s renowned black rights activist Dr Roberta Sykes. In Snake Cradle, Sykes chronicles the first seventeen years of her life in Queensland and gives us a generously open story in her legendary powerful and thought-provoking style. After thirty years of activism, Sykes has become so ... (read more)