Kim Scott (born 18 February 1957) is an Australian novelist of

Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia 50,000 to 65,000 year ...

ancestry. He is a descendant of the

Noongar The Noongar (, also spelt Noongah, Nyungar , Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, Nyugah, and Yunga ) are Aboriginal Australian people who live in the South West, Western Australia, south-west corner of Western Australia, from Geraldton, Western Aus ...

people of

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

Biography

Scott was born in

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

, Western Australia, 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. 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 The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the Will (law), will of Miles Franklin ...

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". 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, 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. 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. Scott was appointed Professor of Writing in the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts of

Curtin University Curtin University (previously Curtin University of Technology and Western Australian Institute of Technology) is an Australian public university, public research university based in Bentley, Western Australia, Bentley, Perth, Western Australia. ...

in December, 2011. He is a member of The Centre for Culture and Technology (CCAT), leading it
Indigenous Culture and Digital Technologies
research program. Scott lives in Coolbellup, a southern suburb of

Fremantle Fremantle () () is a port city in Western Australia located at the mouth of the Swan River (Western Australia), Swan River in the metropolitan area of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth. The Western Australi ...

, Western Australia, with his wife and two children.

Awards

* 1999 – Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Fiction Award for ''Benang: From the Heart'' * 2000 – (joint winner)

Miles Franklin Literary Award The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–195 ...

for ''Benang: From the Heart'' * 2001 – The Kate Challis RAKA Award for Creative Prose for ''Benang: From the Heart'' * 2011 –

Commonwealth Writers' Prize Commonwealth Foundation has presented a number of prizes since 1987. The main award was called the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was composed of two prizes: the Best Book Prize (overall and regional) was awarded from 1987 to 2011; the Best First ...

, Best Book south-east Asia and the Pacific, for ''That Deadman Dance'' * 2011 –

for ''That Deadman Dance'' * 2011 –

ALS Gold Medal The Australian Literature Society Gold Medal (ALS Gold Medal) is awarded annually by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for "an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year." From 1928 to 1974 it was awarded by the ...

for ''That Deadman Dance'' * 2011 – Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Fiction Award and Premier's Prize for ''That Deadman Dance'' * 2012 – Honorary Fellow of the

Australian Academy of the Humanities The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the Australi ...

* 2018 – Queensland Literary Awards, University of Queensland Fiction Book Award for ''Taboo'' * 2019 – Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing, for ''Taboo'' *2019 – shortlisted for 2019 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, Fiction, for ''Taboo'' *2020 – inducted into Western Australian Writers Hall of Fame *2023 – Inaugural Indigenous Studies Fellow of the

*2024 – Elected as

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 800 Fellows, elect ...

International Writer

Bibliography

Novels

* ''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

* "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

* ''The Dredgersaurus'' (Sandcastle demoliter Books, 2001)

Non-fiction

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

Notes

External links

Biography of Kim Scott and the review of his Benang book

Australian Government – The Arts
(Retrieved (31 March 2008)
Lisa Slater 'Kim Scott's ''Benang'': An Ethics of Uncertainty' ''JASAL'' 4 (2005)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scott, Kim 1957 births Living people 20th-century Australian novelists 21st-century Australian novelists Academic staff of Curtin University ALS Gold Medal winners Australian male novelists Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities Indigenous Australian writers Miles Franklin Award winners Noongar people Writers from Perth, Western Australia