The Stella Prize: Meet the Winner – Alexis Wright

Cheryl Leavy is from the Kooma and Nguri Nations in western and central Queensland. The 2022 winner of the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize, Cheryl has performed at the Brisbane and Byron Writers Festivals, Queensland Poetry Festival and with Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra. Cheryl is currently working on a children’s book based on her poetry. It will be published by UQP in 2024. She has served on many arts boards, including the Brisbane Writers Festival, where she established and chaired the First Nations Advisory Council.

Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The author of the prize-winning novels Carpentaria and The Swan Book, Wright has published three works of nonfiction: Take Power, an oral history of the Central Land Council; Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in the Northern Territory; and Tracker, an award-winning collective memoir of Aboriginal leader, Tracker Tilmouth. Her books have been published widely overseas, including in China, the US, the UK, Italy, France and Poland. She held the position of Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne between 2017–2022. Wright is the only author to win both the Miles Franklin Award and The Stella Prize. Her latest novel is Praiseworthy, which received the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction in 2023. She is the inaugural winner of the Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.