Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies; as such, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes as Aboriginality, mateship, egalitarianism, democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and "the beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.
John Hughes is a Sydney-based Australian writer and retired teacher. His first book of autobiographical essays, The Idea of Home, published by Giramondo in 2004, was widely acclaimed and won both the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards for Non-Fiction (2005) and the National Biography Award (2006). In 2022, Hughes faced accusations of plagiarism in his 2021 book The Dogs.
The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry is awarded annually as part of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards for a book of collected poems or for a single poem of substantial length published in book form. It is named after Kenneth Slessor (1901–1971).
Wild & Woolley is an Australian small book publisher founded by Pat Woolley and Michael Wilding in 1973.
Antigone Kefala was an Australian poet and prose-writer of Greek-Romanian heritage. She was a member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council and is acknowledged as being an important voice in capturing the migrant experience in contemporary Australia. In 2017, Kefala was awarded the State Library of Queensland Poetry Collection Judith Wright Calanthe Award at the Queensland Literary Awards for her collection of poems entitled Fragments.
Judith Beveridge is a contemporary Australian poet, editor and academic. She is a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award.
Jennifer Maiden is an Australian poet. She was born in Penrith, New South Wales, and has had 38 books published: 29 poetry collections, 6 novels and 3 nonfiction works. Her current publishers are Quemar Press in Australia and Bloodaxe Books in the UK. She began writing professionally in the late 1960s and has been active in Sydney's literary scene since then. She took a BA at Macquarie University in the early 1970s. She has one daughter, Katharine Margot Toohey. Aside from writing, Jennifer Maiden runs writers workshops with a variety of literary, community and educational organizations and has devised and co-written a manual of questions to facilitate writing by Torture and Trauma Victims. Later, Maiden and Bennett used the questions they had created as a basis for a clinically planned workbook.
storySouth is an online quarterly literary magazine that publishes fiction, poetry, criticism, essays, and visual artwork, with a focus on the Southern United States. The journal also runs the annual Million Writers Award to select the best short stories published each year in online magazines or journals. The journal is one of the most prominent online literary journals and has been the subject of feature profiles in books such as Novel & Short Story Writer's Market. Works published in storySouth have been reprinted in a number of anthologies including Best American Poetry and Best of the Web. The headquarters is in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Alexis Wright is a Waanyi writer best known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria and for being 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.Praiseworthy also won her the Miles Franklin Award in 2024, making her the first person to win the Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Award in the same year.
Adam Aitken is an Australian poet.
HEAT is an international Australian literary magazine published by Giramondo Publishing, an independent publisher based at Western Sydney University.
Ivor Indyk is an Australian literary academic, editor and publisher. He is a professor at the University of Western Sydney, and the founding editor and publisher of award-winning literary imprint Giramondo Publishing and HEAT magazine.
Evelyn Juers is an Australian writer and publisher.
Michael Farrell is a contemporary Australian poet.
Maria Takolander, born in Melbourne in 1973, is an Australian writer of Finnish heritage.
Ellen van Neerven is an Aboriginal Australian writer, educator and editor. Their first work of fiction, Heat and Light (2013), won several awards, and in 2019 Van Neerven won the Queensland Premier's Young Publishers and Writers Award. Their second collection of poetry, Throat (2020), won three awards at the 2021 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, including Book of the Year.
Fiona Wright is an Australian poet and critic.
Lisa Gorton is an Australian poet, novelist, literary editor and essayist. She is the author of three award-winning poetry collections: Press Release, Hotel Hyperion, and Empirical. Her second novel, The Life of Houses, received the NSW Premier's People's Choice Award for Fiction and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction (shared). Gorton is also the editor of Black Inc's anthology Best Australian Poems 2013.
The University of New South Wales Press Ltd. is an Australian academic book publishing company launched in 1962 and based in Randwick, a suburb of Sydney. The ACNC not-for-profit entity has three divisions: NewSouth Publishing, NewSouth Books, and the UNSW Bookshop, situated at the Kensington campus of the University of New South Wales, Sydney. The press is currently a member of the Association of University Presses.
Praiseworthy (2023) is a novel by Australian writer Alexis Wright. It was originally published by Giramondo Publishing in Australia in 2023.
