Jones receives Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature

Gail Jones has won the Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, ‘recognising her impressive body of work and her ongoing mentoring of young writers’.

The award ‘acknowledges the achievements of eminent literary writers over the age of 60 who have made an outstanding and lifelong contribution to Australian literature’.

Jones is professor emerita of writing at the University of Western Sydney and the author of two short story collections and 10 novels, including Sixty Lights (Vintage), Sorry (Vintage), A Guide to Berlin (Vintage), The Death of Noah Glass (Text), Salonika Burning (Text) and One Another (Text). She also has a new novel forthcoming in 2025, The Name of the Sister (Text).

Shortlisted four times for the Miles Franklin Award, Jones has won prizes including the ARA Historical Novel Prize, the Colin Roderick Award, and the Adelaide Festival Award for Fiction, as well as being recognised in the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards. She has also been longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC and the Prix Femina Étranger.

The Creative Australia Awards were this year combined with the National Arts and Disability Awards.

Amanda Cachia was announced winner of the National Arts and Disability Award for an established artist. Cachia is a curator, consultant, writer and art historian specialising in disability art activism, exploring intersections of gender, race, and sexuality. She holds a PhD in art history, theory and criticism from the University of California, San Diego. Cachia’s first book is The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art and Institutional Critique (Temple University Press, December), and she also edited Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation (Routledge), featuring over 40 contributors.

Creative Australia CEO Adrian Collette AM said: ‘It is our immense honour to celebrate these remarkable artists whose work is making an impact in communities across the nation. Each of the recipients contributes their unique voice to our cultural story. We are especially pleased to combine these awards with the celebration of the National Arts and Disability Award recipients, recognising the contributions of artists with disability alongside their peers, and making this a truly momentous celebration of Australia’s rich creative talent and stories.’

First initiated in 1981 and previously known as the Australia Council Awards, the Creative Australia Awards recognise the contribution of outstanding artists to their art forms and to the cultural life of the nation. The recipients are awarded for excellence in the fields of music, literature, community arts and cultural development, emerging and experimental art, visual arts, theatre, and dance. The full list of winners is available on the Creative Australia website.

Last year’s Lifetime Achievement in Literature award was presented to Alexis Wright.

Pictured: Gail Jones.

Photo credit: Heike Steinweg.

Category: Awards Local news