Alexis Wright has won the biennial Magarey Medal for Biography for Tracker (Giramondo).
Wright’s biography of Aboriginal leader, thinker and entrepreneur Tracker Tilmouth was chosen from a shortlist of five announced in May.
The book, which also won this year’s Stella Prize, was praised by the judges as ‘a bespoke biography which crafts its form to fit with its individual subject’ and a ‘clear and worthy winner’. ‘Tracker is a significant achievement, providing a complex historical, social and personal account of a remarkable Australian, and innovating the conventions of biography with Indigenous knowledges and perspectives,’ said the judges.
The judges also highly commended Judith Brett’s The Enigmatic Mr Deakin (Text).
Awarded biennially, the Magarey Medal is open to women who have published a biography on an Australian subject within the past two years, and is administered by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) and the Australian Historical Association. Wright was presented with the award on 3 July at the 2018 Literary Convention in Canberra.
The Magarey Medal was last awarded in 2016 to Libby Connors for Warrior: A Legendary Leader’s Dramatic Life and Violent Death on the Colonial Frontier (A&U).
For more information, visit the ASAL website.