Alexis Wright wins the Melbourne Prize for Literature
Alexis Wright is the winner of the 2024 Melbourne Prize for Literature, worth $60,000. The announcement was made on 14 November at a ceremony at Federation Square, Melbourne.
Awarded triennially, and now in its twentieth year, the prize aims to recognise a Victorian writer whose ‘body of published work has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life’. This year’s shortlist of four included anarchist poet π.O., also published by Giramondo, who last month received the 2024 Patrick White Literary Award. The last Giramondo author to win the prize was Gerald Murnane in 2009.
The judges this year were Evelyn Araluen, Michael Williams and Christos Tsiolkas.
Araluen commented: ‘While we’re privileged to have a wealth of phenomenal writers in Melbourne, Alexis embodies an order of excellence and influence that is transformational for her readers, First Nations or otherwise. 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.’
In addition to the Melbourne Prize, Alexis Wright has this year won awards including the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Stella Prize and the UK’s James Tait Black Prize for her epic novel, Praiseworthy. Other books by Alexis Wright are Carpentaria, The Swan Book, and Tracker, with each winning major literary awards.
Wright will be appearing later this month at the Mountain Festival in Macedon, Victoria. Learn more here.
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