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The Prize for Indigenous Writing: Winner 2006
This year's winner is Tara June Winch, for her novel Swallow the Air, published by University of Queensland Press.
| Judges reportTara June Winch’s Swallow the Air is an auspicious first novel from a young author. Sophisticated and nuanced, it builds a compelling, but poetic, portrait of a young Aboriginal woman in contemporary Australia. Tough-minded observations on race and the complexities of Aboriginal identity are combined with an interest in language and the relation between language, consciousness and experience. It is this interest in language, and the act of writing, that allows Winch to build up a layered portrait of the novel’s protagonist and develop all the complexities of her subjectivity. Winch’s novel is noteworthy for the fact that though it deals with issues associated with youth, and has a youthful protagonist, the reader’s pleasure in reading this text is the result of Swallowing the Air’s integrity as a novel, rather than a simple identification with the main character. | |
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