Alexis Wright: The Swan Book

When Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria won the Miles Franklin, it was the first time an Aboriginal writer was awarded our most prestigious national literary prize outright. It went on to become a worldwide bestseller.
The New York Times praised the novel’s ‘magisterial yet colloquial voice, which transformed the oral tradition of the country’s indigenous people into a swirling narrative spiked with burlesque humour’.
The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginal people still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change.
Alexis Wright combines energy and humour, myth, legend and fairytale – and finds hope in the bleakest of situations.
Featuring
Featuring

Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the Gulf of Carpentaria and the renowned author of the prize-winning novels Carpentaria and The Swan Book. Her most recent book, Tracker, was awarded the 2018 Stella Prize. She holds the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of... Read more

Sophie Cunningham is the author of five books, the most recent of which is City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death & the Need for a Forest. She is a former publisher, former editor of Meanjin, former Chair of the Literature Board of the Australia Council and was a co-founder of The Stella Prize.... Read more
Watch, Listen, Read

Read
The 'continuing awakening' in museums around the globe
27 May 2022

Watch
Straight Talk with Anthony Albanese
26 May 2022

Read
Don’t Be Too Polite, Girls
24 May 2022

Read
Confronting Australia's coal conundrum
19 May 2022

Read
Communicating Consent
19 May 2022

Read
Speaking back to absences and absurdities
13 May 2022