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Image by permission of the National Library of Australia: http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-136364288
Christos Tsiolkas Christos Tsiolkas i(A15508 works by)
Born: Established: 1965 Melbourne, Victoria, ;
Gender: Male
Heritage: Greek
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BiographyHistory

Christos Tsiolkas, the son of Greek migrants, lived in a working class, predominantly Greek, Melbourne inner city suburb and attended state schools including Blackburn High School. He completed an Arts degree at the University of Melbourne in 1987 and has worked as a novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. 

Christos has been shortlisted for several awards including the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and won many awards including the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal and the Melbourne Best Writing Award. His novel Loaded was adapted into a film, and The Slap and Barracuda have been adapted for television. 

His interest in film is evidenced in his writing the first monograph in Currency Press's Australian Film Classics series on Schepisi's film, The Devil's Playground, and his writing and directing of short films. He has also collaborated with photographer Zoe Ali on a series of exhibitions dealing with refuge and exile: Destination Unknown 1, 2 & 3, and on a Blake Prize 2011 shortlisted work 'A New Jerusalem: Faith and the City', combining Ali's photographs of places of worship in Melbourne with texts from the Bible, Koran and Torah with his own writing on contemporary life and faith.

Exhibitions

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Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

Loaded 2020 single work drama

'The 1995 debut novel from Christos Tsiolkas (The Slap, Dead EuropeBarracuda) makes its mainstage premiere 25 years after the fact.

'Ari (Roy Joseph, Five Bedrooms) is 19, unemployed and aimless. He doesn’t want to be gay. He doesn’t want to be Greek. He doesn’t want to be anything. He finds an escape, of sorts, via sex, drugs and dance clubs. But, he doesn’t really fit in with the queens at The Peel any better than with family in his theía’s backyard.

'This is the story that established Tsiolkas as a provocative master of the written word. Adapted for film in the 1998 underground hit Head On, and now, in close collaboration with playwright Dan Giovannoni, Tsiolkas rewrites Ari’s odyssey for the stage with a 21st century perspective.'

Source: Matlhouse Theatre.

2021 winner Victorian Green Room Awards Writing/Adaptation for the Australian Stage
y separately published work icon Damascus Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2019 17060761 2019 single work novel historical fiction

'They kill us, they crucify us, they throw us to beasts in the arena, they sew our lips together and watch us starve. They bugger children in front of fathers and violate men before the eyes of their wives. The temple priests flay us openly in the streets and the Judeans stone us. We are hunted everywhere and we are hunted by everyone. We are despised, yet we grow. We are tortured and crucified and yet we flourish. We are hated and still we multiply. Why is that? You must wonder, how is it we survive?

'Christos Tsiolkas' stunning new novel Damascus is a work of soaring ambition and achievement, of immense power and epic scope, taking as its subject nothing less than events surrounding the birth and establishment of the Christian church. Based around the gospels and letters of St Paul, and focusing on characters one and two generations on from the death of Christ, as well as Paul (Saul) himself, Damascus nevertheless explores the themes that have always obsessed Tsiolkas as a writer: class, religion, masculinity, patriarchy, colonisation, refugees; the ways in which nations, societies, communities, families and individuals are united and divided—it's all here, the contemporary and urgent questions, perennial concerns made vivid and visceral.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2020 longlisted HNSA Historical Novel Prize
2020 longlisted Booksellers Choice Award Adult Fiction Book of the Year
2020 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year
2020 longlisted APA Book Design Awards Best Designed Literary Fiction Book Ddesigned by Christa Moffitt, Christabella Designs
2020 longlisted Indie Awards Fiction
2020 winner Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Fiction
y separately published work icon Merciless Gods Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2014 7903617 2014 selected work short story

'A collection of thrilling, original and imaginative stories from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Slap and Barracuda - a showcase all of his immense and unique story-telling talents.

'Love, sex, death, family, friendship, betrayal, tenderness, sacrifice and revelation...

'This incendiary collection of stories from acclaimed bestselling international writer Christos Tsiolkas takes you deep into worlds both strange and familiar, and characters that will never let you go.' (Publication summary)

2015 shortlisted Voss Literary Prize
2015 winner Queensland Literary Awards Australian Short Story Collection - Steele Rudd Award
2015 longlisted ASAL Awards ALS Gold Medal
Last amended 11 Nov 2021 09:44:26
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