AustLit

'Six authors nominated for the National Biography awards reveal what most surprised them about their subjects.' (Publication abstract)

'The Shepherd’s Hut follows Jaxie, who flees his sleepy hometown and abusive father and heads north ‘for the only person in the world who understands him’. Jaxie ‘traverses the vast, bare West Australian wheatbelt, heading towards the abandoned goldfields, staying out of sight long enough to reach the refuge of the salt country at the edge of the desert’. ' (Publication summary)

'I’m surprised and very pleased to have this little book acknowledged by the industry in this way. So, thank you.

'When I was writing this book I was never really sure what it was. Now that it’s safely behind me, I see that Island Home is a kind of love letter—to this place, its ecosystems and creatures, but also to its people. As I say somewhere in the book, this country leans in on you, it weighs down hard. Like family. Because it is family. And whether I like it or not, I’m caught up in its web, ensnared in all those family matters, organic and intangible, functional and dysfunctional, many of which make me shout at the telly and howl at the moon.' (Introduction)

'The remarkable true stories in The Boy Behind the Curtain reveal an intimate and rare view of Tim Winton’s imagination at work and play.

'A chronicler of sudden turnings, brutal revelations and tender sideswipes, Tim Winton has always been in the business of trouble. In his novels chaos waits in the wings and ordinary people are ambushed by events and emotions beyond their control. But as these extraordinarily powerful memoirs show, the abrupt and the headlong are old familiars to the author himself, for in many ways his has been a life shaped by havoc.

'In The Boy Behind the Curtain Winton reflects on the accidents, traumatic and serendipitous, that have influenced his view of life and fuelled his distinctive artistic vision. On the unexpected links between car crashes and religious faith, between surfing and writing, and how going to the wrong movie at the age of eight opened him up to a life of the imagination. And in essays on class, fundamentalism, asylum seekers, guns and the natural world he reveals not only the incidents and concerns that have made him the much-loved writer he is, but some of what unites the life and the work.

'By turns impassioned, funny, joyous, astonishing, this is Winton’s most personal book to date, an insight into the man who’s held us enthralled for three decades and helped us reshape our view of ourselves. Behind it all, from risk-taking youth to surprise-averse middle age, has been the crazy punt of staking everything on becoming a writer.' (Publication summary)

'Based on Tim Winton’s award-winning novel set in mid-70s coastal Australia. Two teenage boys, hungry for discovery, form an unlikely bond with a reclusive surfer and his mysterious wife. The boys are driven to take risks that will have a profound and lasting impact on their lives.'

Source: Screen Australia.

''I grew up on the world's largest island.'

'This apparently simple fact is the starting point for Tim Winton's beautiful, evocative and sometimes provocative memoir of how this unique landscape has shaped him and his writing.

'For over thirty years, Winton has written novels in which the natural world is as much a living presence as any character. What is true of his work is also true of his life: from boyhood, his relationship with the world around him – rockpools, seacaves, scrub and swamp – was as vital as any other connection. Camping in hidden inlets of the south-east, walking in the high rocky desert fringe, diving at Ningaloo Reef, bobbing in the sea between sets, Winton has felt the place seep into him, with its rhythms, its dangers, its strange sustenance, and learned to see landscape as a living process.

'Island Home is the story of how that relationship with the Australian landscape came to be, and how it has determined his ideas, his writing and his life. It is also a passionate exhortation for all of us to feel the ground beneath our feet. Much more powerfully than a political idea, or an economy, Australia is a physical entity. Where we are defines who we are, in ways we too often forget to our detriment, and the country's.

'Wise, rhapsodic, exalted – Island Home is not just a brilliant, moving insight into the life and art of one of our finest writers, but a compelling investigation into the way our country makes us who we are.' (Publication summary)

'Seventeen extraordinary Australian directors respond to the hauntingly beautiful collection of short stories by Tim Winton. Spanning almost 30 years, these stories provide windows into the lives of men and women in the small coastal town of Angelus. Linking and overlapping, the stories create a stunning and disturbing portrait of a small coastal community in Western Australia. As befits the title of the film, the stories are preoccupied with the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people's lives. Relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever.'

Source: Screen Australia

'Eyrie tells the story of Tom Keely, a man who’s lost his bearings in middle age and is now holed up in a flat at the top of a grim highrise, looking down on the world he’s fallen out of love with. He’s cut himself off, until one day he runs into some neighbours: a woman he used to know when they were kids, and her introverted young boy. The encounter shakes him up in a way he doesn’t understand. Despite himself, Keely lets them in. What follows is a heart-stopping, groundbreaking novel for our times – funny, confronting, exhilarating and haunting – populated by unforgettable characters. It asks how, in an impossibly compromised world, we can ever hope to do the right thing..' (Publisher's blurb)