David Unaipon Award Winners

"When he was in gaol, he'd begun to prepare himself for the fight of his life, a showdown with the policeman, McWilliams … he'd face life with death, and see who blinked first." Blackie and Rips are fresh out of prison when they set off on a road trip back to Wiradjuri country with their mate Carlos. Blackie is out for revenge against the cop who put him in prison on false grounds. He is also craving to reconnect with his grandmother's country. Driven by his hunger for drugs and payback, Blackie reaches dark places of both mystery and beauty as he searches for peace. He is willing to pay for that peace with his own life. Part road-movie, part 'Koori-noir', Dancing Home announces an original and darkly funny new voice.

This absorbing and personal account of Wik activist Jean George Awumpun offers a rare understanding of Aboriginal identity and traditional land. To illustrate her proud Alngith Wikwaya beginnings, Awumpun's early history is told through family member and Alngith descendant Fiona Doyle. This ancestral history combines with the story of Awumpun's struggle in the Wik native title claims, which advanced the earlier Mabo Decision onto mainland Australia. Using photographs, traditionally inspired art and language terms, Fiona Doyle invites us into the heart of Cape York's Wikwaya country.

Hilarious, quirky characters and wicked black humor abound in this fictional account of contemporary rural Australia. An aboriginal woman, her partner, Antman, and their dog, Fleabag, take off on a spirited road trip across Australia, encountering eccentric aunts, six-fingered redheads, and martyrs to the cause of sheep well-being, enjoying along the way all the good things in life-family, laughter, and love. This unique tale offers an incisive and side-splitting look at modern indigenous life and the family and friends that comprise it.

These poems pulse with the language and images of a mangrove-lined river city, the beckoning highway, the just-glimpsed muse, the tug of childhood and restless ancestors. For the first time Samuel Wagan Watson's poetry has been collected into this stunning volume, which includes a final section of all new work.

In this award-winning work of fiction, Ellen van Neerven takes her readers on a journey that is mythical, mystical, and still achingly real. Over three parts, she takes traditional storytelling and gives it a unique, contemporary twist. In "Heat," we meet several generations of the Kresinger family and the legacy left by the mysterious Pearl. In "Water," a futuristic world is imagined and the fate of a people threatened. In "Light," familial ties are challenged and characters are caught between a desire for freedom and a sense of belonging. Heat and Light presents an intriguing collection while heralding the arrival of an exciting new talent in Australian writing.

This is a striking debut volume by the winner of the Unaipon prize for unpublished Aboriginal writers. In a voice youthful, passionate and questioning, these poems reflect on growing up and on letting go; on urban dwellers in love and lust; and on the artist and his Murri community. The politics are unguarded and often amusing; and the language is playful, rhythmic and evocative. Ghosted by ancestors and muses, Watson's cityscape interweaves past and present.

From an authentic, powerful indigenous voice comes this body of poetry that examines issues of identity and culture from a woman's point of view. Lyrical yet radical, uplifting yet uncompromising, this collection evokes pride, painful memories, the realities of Aboriginal life and death, and the power of sisterhood to act as a tribute to the resiliency of Aboriginal women everywhere.

With the powerful, rhythmic sounds of Aboriginal English and Kokatha language woven through the narrative, Mazin Grace is the inspirational story of a feisty girl who refuses to be told who she is, determined to uncover the truth for herself. Growing up on the Mission isn't easy for clever Grace Oldman. When her classmates tease her for not having a father, she doesn't know what to say. Pappa Neddy says her dad is the Lord God in Heaven, but that doesn't help when the Mission kids call her a bastard. As Grace slowly pieces together clues that might lead to answers, she struggles to find a place in a community that rejects her for reasons she doesn't understand. In this novel, author Dylan Coleman fictionalizes her mother's childhood at the Koonibba Lutheran Mission in South Australia in the 1940s and 1950s.

This fictional account of one woman's journey to recover her family and heritage won the 1990 David Unaipon Award for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers. Set in the towns, pastoral stations and repressive institutions of Western Australia, it is a moving story of three generations of Yamatji women. Kate begins her journey with the life of her grandmother, Lucy, a domestic servant. She discovers how her mother's love for a young Aboriginal stockman ended tragically. Kate was born into the Settlement, taught Christian doctrine and trained for a career as a domestic. Gradually and painfully she sheds this narrowly prescribed identity, setting out on the pilgrimage home.

Brave, haunting, and evocative, this powerful volume presents its poetry in the form of a memoir. From the poet's early experiences in an institution and the effect of this on her family to the illustration of her strength and independence as an adult, this biographical collection helps make the Aboriginal experience accessible and resonant. Exploring themes of art, identity, sexuality, and loneliness, this compendium is both universal and intimate.

The Sausage Tree celebrates the favorite childhood game of the authors Rosalie Medcraft and Valda Gee. This award-winning memoir tells of the sisters' childhood spent during the Depression in smalltown Tasmania. For the family of nine, thrift was a virtue and home-grown food and hand-made clothing a necessity. In later years, they learned of their Aboriginal heritage as descendants of Manalargenna, leader of the Trawlwoolway people of Cape Portland in north-east Tasmania.

In 2006, Tara June Winch's startling debut Swallow the Air was published to acclaim. Its poetic yet visceral style announced the arrival a fresh and exciting new talent. This 10th anniversary edition celebrates its important contribution to Australian literature. When May's mother dies suddenly, she and her brother Billy are taken in by Aunty. However, their loss leaves them both searching for their place in a world that doesn't seem to want them. While Billy takes his own destructive path, May sets out to find her father and her Aboriginal identity. Her journey leads her from the Australian east coast to the far north, but it is the people she meets, not the destinations, that teach her what it is to belong. Swallow the Air is an unforgettable story of living in a torn world and finding the thread to help sew it back together.