Alexis Wright becomes the first Aboriginal author to win the $60,000 Melbourne Prize for Literature

By Hannah Story

This year, Alexis Wright became the first author to win both the Stella and the Miles Franklin Award in the same year,
and to win the Stella twice. (Photo: ABC News, Timothy Ailwood)

Waanyi author Alexis Wright has won the $60,000 Melbourne Prize for Literature, awarded to a Victorian writer who has made an "outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life".

She is the first Aboriginal author to win the triennial award, which has been running since 2004 and is for writers working in any genre, including poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction. Past winners include Helen Garner and Christos Tsiolkas.

The win caps off a banner year for 73-year-old Wright, who also won the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award, both worth $60,000, for her latest novel, Praiseworthy.

The 730-page epic also won the UK's longest-running literary award, the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, worth 10,000 British pounds ($19,000) and, last year, won the $15,000 Fiction Book Award at the Queensland Literary Awards.

This latest win puts Wright's prize winnings for 2024 at almost $200,000 before tax, largely off the critical success of Praiseworthy.

Praiseworthy was also shortlisted for the prestigious Dublin Literary Award, worth
100,000 euros ($162,000). (Supplied: Giramondo)

Set in the fictional small town of the same name in northern Australia, which is shrouded by a haze cloud, the novel follows Cause Man Steel, his wife Dance and their children, Aboriginal Sovereignty and Tommyhawk.

Cause Man Steel, a "culture dreamer", hatches a plan to use donkeys to solve both the climate crisis and the economic dependency of Aboriginal peoples.

It was described by ABC Arts book critic Declan Fry as "a realist's view of colonisation … told in language that is roiling and choral and haranguing and acrobatic".

"Wright is always willing to be paradoxical and contradictory, funny and serious, high and low, ridiculous and full of gravitas."

The Melbourne Prize for Literature celebrates Wright's whole body of work. This includes the novel that first won her the Miles Franklin in 2007, Carpentaria, and Tracker, her "collective memoir" of Arrernte activist Tracker Tilmouth, which won the Stella in 2018.

Award-winning poet Evelyn Araluen judged the prize, alongside Tsiolkas and Monthly editor Michael Williams.

"Alexis embodies an order of excellence and influence that is transformational for her readers, First Nations or otherwise," she says.

"It has been a privilege to read her throughout my life, and I'm honoured to have been able to play a role in affirming yet another well-deserved accolade for all her achievements.”

Read full article here.

First published at ABC News, November 14, 2024