I am deeply grateful to you for helping Tracker reach a greater audience.

I wanted it to be a book for our times and from our place in the world. I am totally floored, and would like to thank you for considering the important messages in this book and its style. ‘Although I could not be happier with this book and the tremendous feedback it has been receiving from readers since its publication last November, it is truly amazing that Tracker has been acknowledged by the Stella judges in this way. I was not expecting something like this, and I really had to spend some time unpacking this idea. In her acceptance speech Alexis Wright said, ‘I can tell you that I am completely overwhelmed that Tracker has won the Stella this year and cannot believe it. The book is as much a testament to the powerful role played by storytelling in contemporary Aboriginal life as it is to the legacy of an extraordinary man. Having known him for many years, Alexis Wright interviewed Tracker, along with family, friends, colleagues, and the politicians he influenced, weaving his and their stories together in a manner reminiscent of the work of Nobel Prize–winning author Svetlana Alexievich. Tracker was a visionary, a strategist and a projector of ideas, renowned for his irreverent humour and his determination to tell things the way he saw them. Taken from his family as a child and brought up in a mission on Croker Island, Tracker Tilmouth worked tirelessly for Aboriginal self-determination, creating opportunities for land use and economic development in his many roles, including Director of the Central Land Council of the Northern Territory. The prize, founded in 2013, is named after one of Australia’s iconic female authors, Stella Maria Sarah ‘Miles’ Franklin.Īlexis Wright’s return to non-fiction is a collective memoir of the charismatic Aboriginal leader, political thinker and entrepreneur Tracker Tilmouth, who died in Darwin in 2015 at the age of 62.

The Stella Prize is a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing, and an organisation that champions cultural change.

Congratulations to Alexis Wright, the winner of the 2018 Stella Prize, for her biography, Tracker. The prize was awarded at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney tonight.

Carpentaria alexis wright analysis