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.
Mark Doyle, better known by his stage name Louis Nowra, is an Australian writer, playwright, screenwriter and librettist.
Larissa Yasmin Behrendt is an Australian legal academic, writer, filmmaker and Indigenous rights advocate. As of 2022 she is a professor of law and director of research and academic programs at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology Sydney, and holds the inaugural Chair in Indigenous Research at UTS.
Alana Valentine is an Australian playwright, dramatist, librettist, and director working in theatre, film, opera and television.
Alexis Wright is a Waanyi writer best known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria and the 2018 Stella Prize for her "collective memoir" of Leigh Bruce "Tracker" Tilmouth.
Tara June Winch is an Australian writer. She is the 2020 winner of the Miles Franklin Award for her book The Yield.
Lisa (Marie) Bellear was an Indigenous Australian poet, photographer, activist, spokeswoman, dramatist, comedian and broadcaster. She was a Goenpul woman of the Noonuccal people of Minjerribah, Queensland. Her uncles were Bob Bellear, Australia's first Indigenous judge, and Sol Bellear who helped to found the Aboriginal Housing Corporation in Redfern in 1972.
Robert Lewis Maza, known as Bob Maza, was an Aboriginal Australian actor, playwright and activist.
Currency Press is a leading performing arts publisher and its oldest independent publisher still active. Their list includes plays and screenplays, professional handbooks, biographies, cultural histories, critical studies and reference works.
Andrew Bovell is an Australian writer for theatre, film and television.
Jack Charles, also known as Uncle Jack Charles, was an Australian stage and screen actor and activist, known for his advocacy for Aboriginal people. He was involved in establishing the first Indigenous theatre in Australia, co-founding Nindethana Theatre with Bob Maza in Melbourne in 1971. His film credits include the Australian film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), among others, and more recently appeared in TV series Cleverman (2016) and Preppers (2021).
Meyne Wyatt is an Aboriginal Australian actor, known for his stage, film, and television roles.
Tony Birch is an Aboriginal Australian author, academic and activist. He regularly appears on ABC local radio and Radio National shows and at writers’ festivals. He was head of the honours programme for creative writing at the University of Melbourne before becoming the first recipient of the Dr Bruce McGuinness Indigenous Research Fellowship at Victoria University in Melbourne in June 2015.
Ellen van Neerven is an Aboriginal Australian writer, educator and editor. They are queer and non-binary. 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.
Ilbijerri Theatre Company, formerly Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Cooperative and also known simply as Ilbijerri, styled ILBIJERRI, is an Australian theatre company based in Melbourne that creates theatre creatively controlled by Indigenous artists.
Ali Cobby Eckermann is an Australian poet of Aboriginal Australian ancestry. She is a Yankunytjatjara woman born on Kaurna land in South Australia.
Vivienne Cleven is an Indigenous Australian fiction author and writer of the Kamilaroi people. Her writing includes the novels Bitin’ Back and Her Sister’s Eye.
Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi writer and a senior researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. A review in World Literature Today called her "Australia's most important recently emerged poet".
Yvette Henry Holt is an Aboriginal Australian poet, essayist, academic, researcher and editor, she heralds from the Bidjara, Yiman and Wakaman nations of Queensland. The youngest child born to prominent Aboriginal Elder, Albert Holt and Marlene Holt. Holt came to prominence with her first multi-award-winning collection of poetry, Anonymous Premonition, published by the University of Queensland Press in 2008. Since 2009 Holt has lived and worked in Central Australia among the Central and Western Arrernte peoples of Hermansburg and Alice Springs.
Veronica Gorrie is an Aboriginal Australian writer. She is a Krauatungalang Gunai woman. Her first book, Black and Blue: A memoir of racism and resilience, a memoir reflecting on her Aboriginality and the decade she spent in the police force, was released in 2021. Black and Blue won the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia's richest literary award, in 2022.
