Alexis Wright – April 14 2019

Alexis is an activist and award-winning writer. From the Waanji people of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria on her mother’s side, her father, a white cattleman, died when she was five and she grew up with her mother and grandmother in Cloncurry, Queensland. Alexis holds degrees in social studies, media and creative writing from universities in Adelaide and Melbourne. Published widely in magazines and journals, she has edited an anthology of writings on the history of the land rights movement in Central Australia. Her other works include the novel Plains of Promise and the short stories Le pacte du serpent arc-en-ciel (The Serpent’s Covenant). Her non fiction works include Grog War, Croire en l’incroyable (Believing the Unbelievable) and the ‘collective memoir’ Tracker. In 2017, Alexis was named the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne. She is also a Distinguished Research Fellow at The Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University and a current member of the Australian Research Council research project “Other Worlds: Forms of World Literature” focusing on forms of Aboriginal oral storytelling.

Carpentaria
Giramondo, 2006; ISBN 9781920882174
Initially rejected by every major publisher in Australia, this is the story of several inhabitants of the fictional town Desperance, situated on the Gulf of Carpentaria in northwest Queensland, in which the Aboriginal people of the Pricklebush clan are in conflict with various enemies in the community – the white inhabitants of Desperance, the local law enforcement and government officials, and a multinational mining operation. The narrative chronicles the interpersonal relationships of three men embroiled in these disputes: wise, pragmatic Normal Phantom; shamanic practitioner of traditional religion, Mozzie Fishman; and Norm’s son, Will Phantom, who deserted his father’s house to undertake a cross-country spiritual journey with Fishman and returns with something of Fishman’s character in him.

The Swan Book
Giramondo, 2013; ISBN 9781922146410
Set in the future, with Aboriginals still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change, this novel follows the life of a mute teenager, the survivor of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousands of black swans driven from other parts of the country, to her marriage to Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia, and her elevation to the position of First Lady, confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city. Offering an intimate awareness of the realities facing Aboriginal people, the wild energy and humour of the writing finds hope in the bleakest situations.