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Josephine Wilson Josephine Wilson i(A68232 works by)
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

Josephine Wilson was born in Lincolnshire, and came to Australia with her family at the age of six. An author and academic, she has a Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing from The University of Queensland and a PhD from the University of Western Australia.

She has worked as an essayist, arts reviewer, and tutor in writing and theatre, and has had plays performed in Sydney and London. In 2017, her novel Extinctions won both the Colin Roderick Award and the Miles Franklin Award: it had previously won the Dorothy Hewett Award as an unpublished manuscript in 2015.

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Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Extinctions Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2016 9145761 2016 single work novel

'He hated the word ‘retirement’, but not as much as he hated the word ‘village’, as if ageing made you a peasant or a fool. Herein lives the village idiot.

'Professor Frederick Lothian, retired engineer, world expert on concrete and connoisseur of modernist design, has quarantined himself from life by moving to a retirement village. His wife, Martha, is dead and his two adult children are lost to him in their own ways. Surrounded and obstructed by the debris of his life – objects he has collected over many years and tells himself he is keeping for his daughter – he is determined to be miserable, but is tired of his existence and of the life he has chosen.

'When a series of unfortunate incidents forces him and his neighbour, Jan, together, he begins to realise the damage done by the accumulation of a lifetime’s secrets and lies, and to comprehend his own shortcomings. Finally, Frederick Lothian has the opportunity to build something meaningful for the ones he loves.

'Humorous, poignant and galvanising by turns, Extinctions is a novel about all kinds of extinction – natural, racial, national and personal – and what we can do to prevent them.' (Publication summary)

2015 inaugural winner Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript
2017 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards Fiction
2017 winner Colin Roderick Award
2017 winner Miles Franklin Literary Award
Last amended 24 Aug 2018 16:12:21
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