Alexis Wright

Alexis Wright (born 25 November 1950) is an Indigenous Australian writer best known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria.

Origin and activism

Alexis Wright is a land rights activist originally from the Waanyi people in the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. Wright's father, a white cattleman, died when she was five years old and she grew up in Cloncurry, Queensland with her mother and grandmother.

When the Northern Territory Intervention proposed by the Howard Government in mid-2007 was introduced, Wright delivered of a high-profile 10,000-word speech, sponsored by International PEN, in which her identification of an ethos of national fear in Australia came to be portrayed in the national media as a characterisation of the feelings of Indigenous peoples associated with the Intervention.

Literary career

Alexis Wright's first book Plains of Promise published in 1997 was nominated for several literary awards and has been reprinted several times by University of Queensland Press.

Alexis

Alexis can refer to:

Sydney Writers' Festival

Sydney Writers' Festival is an annual literary festival held in the Australian city of Sydney. The Festival's artistic director is Jemma Birrell.

History

The festival began in January 1997, with most events initially held at the State Library of New South Wales. The first independent Sydney Writers' Festival ran from 12–17 May 1998, with 169 participants appearing in venues in, and around, the centre of Sydney.

Since then, the festival has rapidly expanded. Held mid-to-late May each year, the festival now involves over 400 participants and presents over 300 events in renovated piers in Walsh Bay, Sydney. Other festival locations include Sydney Theatre, Sydney Town Hall, City Recital Hall, and Sydney Opera House. Events are also regularly held in regional and suburban locations including Parramatta, Ashfield, Auburn, Blacktown, Bankstown, Campbelltown, Hornsby, Penrith, the Blue Mountains, and Wollongong.

Approximately one third of all Sydney Writers' Festival events are free of charge. Festival attendances have reached over 80,000 each year since 2007.

Never Be the Same

Never Be the Same may refer to:

See also

Alice Walker

Alice Malsenior Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist. She wrote the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple (1982) for which she won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She also wrote Meridian and The Third Life of Grange Copeland, among other works.

Early life

Walker was born in Putnam County, Georgia, the youngest of eight children, to Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant. Her father, who was, in her words, "wonderful at math but a terrible farmer," earned only $300 ($4,000 in 2013 dollars) a year from sharecropping and dairy farming. Her mother supplemented the family income by working as a maid. She worked 11 hours a day for $17 per week to help pay for Alice to attend college.

Living under Jim Crow laws, Walker's parents resisted landlords who expected the children of black sharecroppers to work the fields at a young age. A white plantation owner said to her that black people had "no need for education". Minnie Lou Walker, according to her daughter, replied "You might have some black children somewhere, but they don't live in this house. Don't you ever come around here again talking about how my children don't need to learn how to read and write." Her mother enrolled Alice in first grade when the girl was four years old.