” The Indigenous Australians, on the other hand, see themselves as an extension of the land and the black tracker says: “This land is me. White Australians see the land as something to be exploited for monetary gain, as the farmer says: “This land is mine. In 2007 Carpentaria won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, Best Fiction Book, and the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA), Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year.īiographical information from the Australia Council website.1 A song in the 2001 film One Night the Moon by the Australian director Rachel Perkins neatly summarises the difference between the white Australian and the Indigenous Australian relationship to the land. An epic set in the Gulf country of north-western Queensland, from where her people come, the novel tells of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance. Her latest novel, Carpentaria was published by Giramondo in 2006. The novel has been translated into French.Īlexis has published award-winning short stories and her other books are the anthology Take Power (Jukurrpa Books, l998), celebrating 20 years of land rights in Central Australia and Grog War (Magabala,1997), an examination of the alcohol restrictions in Tennant Creek. Her acclaimed first novel Plains of Promise was published in 1997 by University of Queensland Press and was shortlisted in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, The Age Book of the Year, and the NSW Premier's Awards. An epic set in the Gulf country of north-western Queensland, fro Alexis Wright is from the Waanji people from the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria.

Alexis has published award-winning short stories and her other books are the anthology Take Power (Jukurrpa Books, l998), celebrating 20 years of land rights in Central Australia and Grog War (Magabala,1997), an examination of the alcohol restrictions in Tennant Creek. The novel has been translated into French.

Alexis Wright is from the Waanji people from the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria.

Carpentaria alexis