亚历克西丝·赖特

亚历克西丝·赖特，FAHA（Alexis Wright，1950年11月25日—），澳大利亚原住民作家。作品有小说《卡彭塔利亚湾》、《地平线上的奥德赛》、《天鹅书》等，另外还著有一些非虚构作品。她曾数度获迈尔斯·富兰克林奖。

生平

赖特的第二部小说《卡彭塔利亚湾》花了两年时间构思，六年多时间写作。在2006年独立出版商Giramondo出版之前，它被澳大利亚所有主要出版商拒绝。它在2007年6月获得了迈尔斯·富兰克林奖，同年获昆士兰州长文学奖虚构图书奖、ALS金奖和万斯·帕尔默小说奖。

2013年，赖特的第三部小说《天鹅书》出版。这本书深入探讨了澳大利亚土著人民面临的文化和种族政治挑战。它入围了2014年维多利亚州州长土著写作文学奖。

2023年，赖特推出了长篇小说新作《可嘉》，获虚构图书奖、詹姆斯·泰特·布莱克奖，次年获斯泰拉奖。

Alexis Wright (born 25 November 1950) is an Australian writer. She is best known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria and 2024 novel Praiseworthy. She was the first writer to win the Stella Prize twice, in 2018 for her "collective memoir" of Leigh Bruce "Tracker" Tilmouth and in 2024 for Praiseworthy. She was the first person to win the Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Award in the same year.

Wright has published four novels, one biography, and several works of nonfiction. Her work also appears in anthologies and journals.

Early life and education

Alexis Wright was born on 25 November 1950 in Cloncurry, Queensland, Australia. She is an Aboriginal Australian woman of the Waanyi nation in the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. Her father, a white cattleman, died when she was five years old. She grew up in Cloncurry with her mother and grandmother.

Activism

Wright has been a land rights activist.

When the Northern Territory Intervention proposed by the Howard Government in mid-2007 was introduced, Wright delivered a high-profile 10,000-word speech, sponsored by International PEN.

Literary career

Wright's first book was the novel Plains of Promise, published in 1997. She is also the author of non-fiction works. Take Power, on the history of the land rights movement, was published in 1998, and Grog War (Magabala Books) on the introduction of alcohol restrictions in Tennant Creek, published in 1997.

Her second novel, Carpentaria, took two years to conceive and more than six years to write. It was rejected by every major publisher in Australia before independent publisher Giramondo published it in 2006. It went on to win several major prizes and excerpts of it, alongside, Plains of Promise is included in the Anthology of Aboriginal Literature (2008).

In 2013 Wright's third novel, The Swan Book, was published. The book delves into the cultural and racial political challenges facing Australia's Indigenous peoples.

Wright's book, Tracker, her tribute to the central Australian activist Tracker Tilmouth, was published by Giramondo in 2017. A biographical work variously characterised as unconventional and complicated, In the words of Ben Etherington: "It is a work, epic in scope and size, that will ensure that a legend of Central Australian politics is preserved in myth."

Collaborations, media, and other activities

In 2009, Wright wrote the words for Dirtsong, a musical theatre production created and performed by the Black Arm Band theatre company. The performance included both contemporary and traditional songs, and had its world premiere at the 2009 Melbourne International Arts Festival. The show was reprised for the 2014 Adelaide Festival, with performers including Trevor Jamieson, Archie Roach, Lou Bennett, Emma Donovan, Paul Dempsey, and many other singers and musicians. Some of the songs were sung in Aboriginal languages.

Wright was a 2012 attendee of the Byron Bay Writers Festival and Singapore Writers Festival.

Wright was on the program for four events at the 2017 Brisbane Writers Festival in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

In 2018, Wright conducted another storytelling collaboration, this time with the Gangalidda leader and activist Clarence Walden in Doomadgee, Northern Queensland. Her work with Walden led to two feature documentaries, Nothing but the Truth, a radio feature that broadcast on the Awaye! program on ABC Radio National in June 2019, and Straight from the Heart, a screen documentary that premiered at World Literature and the Global South in August 2019.

Recognition and awards

Plains of Promise (1997), was nominated for several literary awards.

Carpentaria won the Miles Franklin Award in June 2007, the 2007 Fiction Book Award in the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, the 2007 ALS Gold Medal and the 2007 Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction.

The Swan Book was shortlisted for the 2014 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing.

In 2014, Wright was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.