'Continue dreaming and believe in dreams'

 

“We have to think big. We have to imagine big, and that's part of the problem. We're letting other people imagine and lead us down what paths they want to take us. Sometimes they're very limited in the way their ideas are constructed. We need to imagine much more broadly. That's the work of a writer, and more writers should look at it.” –  Alexis Wright

Born in Australia on Nov. 25, 1950 Wright is an Indigenous writer and land rights champion for the native Australian people. 

 

An award nominee for many of her writings, she has published both fiction and nonfiction and is a noted essayist as well as novelist.  Her major nonfiction books are Take Power, an anthology on the history of the land rights movement, and Grog War on the introduction of alcohol restrictions in her native Tennant Creek area. 

 

But it is her fiction that has earned her top accolades. Her 2006 book Carpentaria, based on the interconnected stories of several inhabitants of the fictional town of Desperance on Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria, won both the Miles Franklin Award (Austrailia’s premiere writing prize) and the Stella Prize, an annual award recognizing the best book by a female writer in any genre.

 

This year, she repeated both honors for her 2023 novel Praiseworthy, a dystopian tale set in a fictional northern Australian community.  She is the first Australian author to win both awards twice.   

 

 “My role as a novelist is to explore ideas and imagination,” Wright said.  “Hopefully that will inspire people from my world to continue dreaming and to believe in dreams.”