Writing and Society Research Centre

Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the Gulf of Carpentaria. She is the author of the novel Carpentaria, which won five national literary awards in 2007, including the ASAL Gold Medal and the Miles Franklin Award. Her first novel Plains of Promise was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and published in France as Les Plaines de L'Espoir. Her other books are Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in Tennant Creek, the short story collection Le Pacte de Serpent, and as editor, Take Power, a collection of essays and stories celebrating twenty years of land rights in Central Australia. She has written widely on Indigenous rights, and organised two successful Indigenous Constitutional Conventions, ‘Today We Talk About Tomorrow’ (1993), and the Kalkaringi Convention (1998).

Works on Alexis Wright

The following is a selected list of works about Alexis Wright and her novels. More can be found by searching the Australian Literature Resource.

Aitken, Tom. “A Mine in Desperance.” The Times Literary Supplement 5485 (16 May 2008): 21.

Armellino, Pablo. “The Outback.” Ob-Scene Spaces in Australian Narrative: An Account of the Socio-Topographic Construction of Space in Australian Literature. Stuttgart, Germany: Verlag, 2009. 57–188.

Ashcroft, W.D. “‘Stories of thie Old Country’: Reinventing Dreamtime Tropes in Poor Fellow My Country, Benang, and Carpentaria.” Intimate Horizons: The Post-Colonial Sacred in Australian Literature. Adelaide, SA: ATF Press, 2009. 205–241.

Bartlett, Francesca. “Clean White Girls: Assimilation and Women’s Work.” Hecate 25.1 (1999): 10–38.

Behrendt, Larissa. “The Pointed Review.” National Indigenous Times 6.143 (29 November 2007): 30.

Berndt, Ronald M. “‘Blackfella Loving.’” Aboriginal Voices: Contemporary Aboriginal Artists, Writers and Performers. Brookvale, NSW: Simon and Schuster, 1990. 40–41.

Cahill, Michelle. “From Ferlinghetti to Picaro and the Crossing of Borders.” Five Bells 15.3 (2008): 30–32.

Devlin-Glass, Frances. “A Politics of the Dreamtime: Destructive and Regenerative Rainbows in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria.” Australian Literary Studies 23.4 (2008): 392–407.

Devlin-Glass, Frances. "Review of Carpentaria." Antipodes 21.1 (2007): 82–84.

Dolce, Maria Renata. “Telling the ‘Truth’ about Australia’s Past : Reconciliation as Recognition in Society and Literature.” Bernard Hickey, a Roving Cultural Ambassador: Essays in His Memory. Ed. Maria Renata Dolce and Antonella Riem.  Udine: Forum Editrice Universitaria Udinese, 2009. 107–125.

Ferrier, Carole. “‘Disappearing Memory’ and the Colonial Present in Recent Indigenous Women’s Writing.” JASAL Special Issue 2008, 37–55. Available online at: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/721

Ferrier, Carole. “The Best Australian Novel for Years.” Australian Women’s Book Review 18.2 (2006).

Ferrier, Carole. “White Blindfolds and Black Armbands: The Uses of Whiteness Theory for Reading Australian Cultural Production.” Queensland Review 6.1 (1999): 42–49.

Gleeson-White, Jane. “The Secret Life of Stories.” Meanjin 68.4 (2009): 59–65.

Grossman, Michele. “Reach on out to the other side: Grog War and Plains of Promise.” Meridian 17.1 (1998): 81–87.

Hassall, Anthony J. Review of Carpentaria. Westerly 52 (2007): 187–199.

Jacobs, Lyn. “Homelands vs ‘The Tropics’: Crossing the Line.” JASAL 2 (2003): 167–178. Available online at: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/30

Jewell, Melinda Rose. “‘A Vision through the Smoky Haze’: Viewing Corroboree in Selected Australian Novels.” Australian Studies 20.1–2 (2005): 31–54.

Jose, Nicholas. “Australian Literature Inside and Out.” JASAL Special Issue 2009. Available online at: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/894/1752

Joseph, Laura. “Dreaming Phantoms and Golems: Elements of The Place Beyond Nation in Carpentaria and Dreamhunter.” JASAL Special Issue 2009. Available online at: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/848/1759

Joseph, Laura. “Opening the Gates of Hell: Regional Emergences in Carpentaria and Dreamhunter.” Southerly 69.2 (2009): 66–80.

Kral, Francoise. “ Re-Surfacing through Palimpsests: A (False) Quest for Repossession in the Works of Mudrooroo and Alexis Wright.” Commonwealth 25.1 (2002): 7–14.

Lowry, Elizabeth. “The Fishman Lives the Lore.” London Review of Books 30.8 (24 April 2008): 26–27.

McFadyen, Kate. “Makes Lightning Look Dull.” Australian Book Review 285 (2006): 43.

McGrath, Ann. “Translating Histories: Australian Aboriginal Narratives, History and Literature.” The Southern Hemisphere Review 24 (2008): 34–47.

n.a. “A Brief Conversation with Alexis Wright.” World Literature Today 82.6 (2008): 53–55.

O’Brien, Kerry. “Alexis Wright interview.” Hecate 33.1 (2007): 215–219.

Perera, Suvendrini. “Future’s Imperfect.” Alter/Asians: Asian-Australian Identities in Art, Media and Popular Culture. Ed. Ien Ang, Mandy Thomas, Sharon Chalmers. Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press, 2000. 3–24.

Perlez, Jane. “Aboriginal Lit.” The New York Times Book Review 112.46 (18 November 2007): 31.

Pons, Xanvier. Messengers of Eros: Representations of Sex in Australian Writing. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009. 317–340.

Ravenscroft, Alison. “Politics of Exposure: An Interview with Alexis Wright.” Meridian 17.1 (1998): 75–80.

Renes, Cornelis Martin. “Discomforting Readings: Uncanny Perceptions of Self in Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise and David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon.” Eucalypt 2 (2003).

Sharp, Nonie. "Review of Carpenteria." Island 111 (2007): 61–67.

Sharrad, Paul. “Beyond Capricornia : Ambiguous Promise in Alexis Wright.” Australian Literary Studies 24.1 (2009): 52–65.

Shoemaker, Adam. “Hard Dreams and Indigenous Worlds in Australia’s North.” Hecate 34.1 (2008): 55–61.

Smith, Tony. “Miners and Indigenes : Poles Apart in the Tropics and the Tundra.” Australian Quarterly 81.1 (2009): 33–36.

Stephenson, Peta. “Cross-Cultural Alliances: Exploring Aboriginal Asian Literary and Cultural Production.” Lost in the Whitewash: Aboriginal-Asian Encounters in Australia, 1901–2001. Ed. Penny Edwards, Yuanfang Shen. Canberra, ACT:  Australian National University, Humanities Research Centre, 2003. 143–162.

Syson, Ian. “Uncertain Magic.” Overland 187 (2007): 85–86.

Torre, Stephen. “Singing the Country Afresh.” LiNQ 35 (2008): 142–146.

Trikha, Pradeep. “Carpentaria: A Collage of Identity, Ethos and Ethnicity.” IJAS 1.1 (2008): 133–141.

Vernay, Jean-Francois. “An Interview with Alexis Wright.” Antipodes 18.2 (2004): 119–122.

Wright, Alexis. “On Writing Carpentaria.” HEAT 13, new series (2007): 79–95.