Kim Scott

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Kim Scott

Born (1957-02-18) 18 February 1957 (age 67)
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Notable awardsMiles Franklin Award
2000 Benang
Miles Franklin Award
2011 That Deadman Dance

Kim Scott FAHA (born 18 February 1957)[1] is an Australian novelist of Aboriginal Australian ancestry. He is a descendant of the Noongar people of Western Australia.

Biography[edit]

Scott was born in Perth in 1957 and is the eldest of four siblings with a white mother and an Aboriginal father.

Scott has written five novels and a children's book, and has had poetry and short stories published in a range of anthologies. He began writing shortly after becoming a secondary school teacher of English. His teaching experience included working in urban, rural Australia and in Portugal. He spent some time teaching at an Aboriginal community in the north of Western Australia, where he started to research his family's history.[2]

His first novel, True Country, was published in 1993 with an edition published in a French translation in 2005. His second novel, Benang, won the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards 1999, the Miles Franklin Award 2000, and the Kate Challis RAKA Award 2001. Both novels were influenced by his research and seemed to be semi-autobiographical. The themes of these novels have been said to "explore the problem of self-identity faced by light-skinned Aboriginal people and examine the government's assimilationist policies during the first decades of the twentieth century".[2]

Scott was the first indigenous writer to win the Miles Franklin Award for Benang, which has since been published in translation in France and the Netherlands. His book, Kayang and Me, was written in collaboration with Noongar elder Hazel Brown, his aunt,[2] and was published in May 2005. The work is a monumental oral-based history of the author's family, the south coast Noongar people of Western Australia.[3]

His 2010 novel That Deadman Dance (Picador) explores the lively fascination felt between Noongar, British colonists and American whalers in the early years of the 19th century. On 21 June 2011, it was announced that Scott had won the 2011 Miles Franklin Award for this novel. Scott also won the 2011 Victorian Premier's Prize for the same novel.[4]

Scott was appointed Professor of Writing in the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts of Curtin University in December, 2011.[5] He is a member of The Centre for Culture and Technology (CCAT), leading its Indigenous Culture and Digital Technologies research program.[6][7]

Scott lives in Coolbellup, a southern suburb of Fremantle, Western Australia, with his wife and two children.

Awards[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

Novels[edit]

  • True Country (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1993)
  • Benang: From the Heart (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1999)
  • Lost (Southern Forest Arts, 2006)
  • That Deadman Dance (Picador, 2010)
  • Taboo (Picador Australia, 2017)

Short stories[edit]

  • "An Intimate Act" in Summer Shorts by Peter Holland (Fremantle Press, 1993)
  • "Registering Romance" in Summer Shorts 3 : Stories – Poems – Articles – Images by Bill Warnock, et al., (Fremantle Press, 1995)
  • "Into the Light (after Hans Heysen's painting of the same name)" in Those Who Remain Will Always Remember : An Anthology of Aboriginal Writing by Anne Brewster, et al., (Fremantle Press, 2000)
  • "Damaged but Persistent" in Siglo no.12 Summer (2000)
  • "Capture", in Southerly (pp. 24–33), vol.62 no.2 (2002)
  • Escapeó Éll Ćhapo

Children's picture book[edit]

  • The Dredgersaurus (Sandcastle demoliter Books, 2001)

Non-fiction[edit]

  • Kayang and Me with Hazel Brown (Fremantle Arts Press, 2005)

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ "State Finalist Australian of the Year 2013". www.australianoftheyear.org.au/. Australian of the Year Awards. Archived from the original on 7 March 2016. Retrieved 15 July 2014.
  2. ^ a b c "Austlit — Kim Scott". Austlit. Retrieved 29 March 2024.
  3. ^ Kayang & Me - Fremantle Press.
  4. ^ "Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2011". The Wheeler Centre. Archived from the original on 8 February 2019. Retrieved 2 February 2019.
  5. ^ Daniel, Grace (1 December 2011). "Award-winning author Kim Scott appointed Professor at Curtin - News and Events | Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia". News and Events.
  6. ^ "Professor Kim Scott | Curtin University". ccat-lab.org. Retrieved 5 September 2015.
  7. ^ "Indigenous Culture and Digital Technologies - Centre For Culture & Technology". ccat-lab.org. Retrieved 5 September 2015.
  8. ^ a b "Fellow Profile – Kim Scott". Australian Academy of the Humanities. Retrieved 23 November 2023.
  9. ^ "Queensland Literary Awards 2018 winners announced | Books+Publishing". Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  10. ^ "VPLAs 2019: Manus detainee Boochani wins $100k top prize". Books+Publishing. 1 February 2019. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
  11. ^ "Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2019". The Wheeler Centre. Archived from the original on 29 December 2018. Retrieved 31 January 2019.
  12. ^ "Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature". State Library of South Australia. December 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
  13. ^ "Scott joins WA Writers Hall of Fame, WA Prem's Book Award winners announced". Books+Publishing. 10 August 2020. Retrieved 19 August 2020.

External links[edit]