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Tara June Winch Tara June Winch i(A84662 works by)
Born: Established: 1983 Wollongong, Wollongong area, Illawarra, South Coast, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Female
Heritage: Aboriginal ; Aboriginal Wiradjuri ; English
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BiographyHistory

Tara June Winch was born in Wollongong in 1983. She is of Wiradjuri and English heritage. At 17, Winch left home to travel across Australia.

She studied for a Bachelor of Arts, Indigenous Studies at Ginibi College, Southern Cross University, but left after the manuscript for her first book won the David Unaipon Award in 2004. It was subsequently published in 2006 by UQP.  She was chosen for the 2008-2009 Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative in which she was partnered with Nigerian writer and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. Winch was an ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Project and is currently ambassador for Children's Ground. 

Winch's first novel — Swallow the Air (2006) — was on the HSC curriculum for Standard and Advanced English from 2009 to 2019. Her writing has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Griffith Review, VOGUE, Harpers BazaarSydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, VICE, and McSweeneys

In 2016, Winch published a collection of short stories, After the Carnage.

Her 2020 novel, The Yield, won the Miles Franklin Award, the Prime Minister's Award for Fiction, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, People's Choice, and Book of the Year at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, the Voss Literary Prize, as well as others, and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. 

Winch is based in France where she lives with her family. 

Exhibitions

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The Yield Melbourne : Hamish Hamilton , 2019 15449866 2019 single work novel

'After a decade in Europe August Gondiwindi returns to Australia for the funeral of her much-loved grandfather, Albert, at Prosperous House, her only real home and also a place of great grief and devastation.

'Leading up to his death Poppy Gondiwindi has been compiling a dictionary of the language he was forbidden from speaking after being sent to Prosperous House as a child. Poppy was the family storyteller and August is desperate to find the precious book that he had spent his last energies compiling.

'The Yield also tells the story of Reverend Greenleaf, who recalls founding the first mission at Prosperous House and recording the language of the first residents, before being interred as an enemy of the people, being German, during the First World War.

'The Yield, in exquisite prose, carefully and delicately wrestles with questions of environmental degradation, pre-white contact agriculture, theft of language and culture, water, religion and consumption within the realm of a family mourning the death of a beloved man.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2021 longlisted International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
2020 winner Prime Minister's Literary Awards Fiction
2020 longlisted HNSA Historical Novel Prize
2020 shortlisted Barbara Jefferis Award
2020 winner Voss Literary Prize
2020 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards Fiction Book Award
2020 longlisted Colin Roderick Award
2020 joint winner Booksellers Choice Award Adult Fiction Book of the Year
2020 winner Miles Franklin Literary Award
2020 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards People's Choice Award
2020 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Book of the Year
2020 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
2020 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year
2020 shortlisted The Stella Prize
2020 longlisted Indie Awards Fiction
2020 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Fiction
y separately published work icon After the Carnage St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2016 9383449 2016 selected work short story

'Ten years after the much-acclaimed Swallow the Air, Tara June Winch returns with an extraordinary new collection of stories'

'A single mother resorts to extreme measures to protect her young son. A Nigerian student undertakes a United Nations internship in the hope of a better future. A recently divorced man starts a running group with members of an online forum for recovering addicts. '

'Ranging from New York to Istanbul, from Pakistan to Australia, these unforgettable stories chart the distances in their characters’ lives – whether they have grown apart from the ones they love, been displaced from their homeland, or are struggling to reconcile their dreams with reality. A collection of prodigious depth and variety, After the Carnage marks the impressive evolution of one of our finest young writers.' (Source: Publisher's website)

2017 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards Australian Short Story Collection - Steele Rudd Award
2017 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
2017 highly commended Victorian Premier's Literary Awards The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
The Last Class 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: After the Carnage 2016; (p. 19-33)
''Who brought the knife? In fact it wasn't a good idea to have a knife at school.' (19)
2016 shortlisted Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize
Last amended 2 Nov 2021 10:42:36
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