Kim Scott

Kim Scott is a descendant of the Noongar people from the south-east coast of Western Australia.

He has written two novels and a children's book, and has had poetry and short stories published in a range of anthologies. 

Kim Scott is a descendant of people who lived along the south-coast of Western Australia, and is one among those who call themselves Noongar. He was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1957.

His first novel, True Country (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Australia, 1993), is a semi-autobiographical novel that charts through the character of Billy the author's own experience of cultural dislocation - the sense of not fully belonging in either Aboriginal or white culture, of feeling the loss of one's inheritance and language while understanding the benefits of white education.

Scott's second novel, Benang, won the Western Australian Premiers Literary Award 1999, the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2000, and the RAKA Kate Challis Award, one of Australia's most valuable and prestigious national awards for Indigenous creative artists, in 2001. He was the first Indigenous writer to win the Miles Franklin Award.

Benang has since been published in translation in France, China and the Netherlands. The novel interrogates the assimilation policies administered by A O Neville, the Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia from 1915-1940.

His latest book Kayang and Me (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Australia, 2005) is a collaboration with Noongar elder, Hazel Brown. The work is a monumental oral-based history of the author's Noongar family on the south coast of Western Australia.

Kim has published poetry, short stories and articles in a range of journals and anthologies. He has been a guest at many writers and Indigenous arts festivals in Australia, been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Melbourne, and was one of the guest speakers in the 2001 Century of Federation Alfred Deakin Lecture Series in Melbourne, Victoria.

Contact:  Fremantle Press
www.fremantlepress.com.au