Kim Scott

Kim Scott is an Australian author of Noongar heritage who has won the Miles Franklin Award twice — for Benang (1999) and That Deadman Dance (2011). He is the first Indigenous Australian author to have won the Miles Franklin. His work is deeply informed by his connection to the Noongar people and language of southwestern Australia, and is concerned with the possibilities of Indigenous survival and regeneration in the face of colonisation. That Deadman Dance is set in the 1830s at the time of first contact between the Noongar people and British settlers. It follows Bobby Wabalanginy, an exuberant young Noongar man who becomes a go-between for the two cultures, until the inevitable betrayal and dispossession. The novel is celebrated for its linguistic inventiveness and its refusal to simplify the complexity of colonial encounter. Scott is a Professor of Writing at Curtin University in Perth and has been involved in projects to revitalise and document the Noongar language. He is widely regarded as one of the most important living Australian authors.