Kim Scott

Kim Scott (born 1957) is an Australian writer of an Aboriginal ancestry.He is a descendant of Nyoongar people.

Biography

Scott was born in Perth in 1957 and he is the eldest of four siblings with a white mother and an aboriginal father. Scott has written two novels and a children's book, and has had poetry and short stories published in a range of anthologies.cite web |title= Kim Scott |publisher= Austlit: The Australian Literature Resource |url= http://www.austlit.edu.au/run?ex=GuidedSearch&type=simple&searchWhere=author&generalSearchString=scott%2C+kim |accessdate= 2008-05-31] 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 "WA Premiers Literary Award" 1999, the "Miles Franklin Award" 2000, and the "RAKA Kate Challis Award" 2001. Both novels were influenced by his research and seemed to be semi-autobiographical. The themes of these novels have been described as, "explor [ing] 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 Nyoongar 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 Nyoongar people of Western Australia.Fact|date=May 2008

Scott lives in Coolbellup, a southern suburb of Perth, 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 for "Benang : from the Heart"
* 2001 - The Kate Challis RAKA Award for Creative Prose for "Benang : from the Heart"

Bibliography

Novels

* "True Country" (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1993)
* "" (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1999)
* "Kayang and Me" with Hazel Brown (Fremantle Arts Press, 2005)
* "Lost" (Southern Forest Arts, 2006)

hort 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)

Children's Picture Book

* "The Dredgersaurus" (Sandcastle Books, 2001)

Notes

External links

* Singing our place little bit new: aboriginal narrativity and nation building in Kim Scott's True Country.(Critical Essay)
* [http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/lr/2003/04/06/stories/2003040600180300.htm Biography of Kim Scott and the review of his Benang book]
* [http://www.mwf.com.au/Bios/scottk.html another review of the Benang book]
* [http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/the_arts/artists_and_orgs/artists/kim_scott Australian Government - The Arts] (Retrieved (March 31, 2008)

Persondata
NAME=Scott, Kim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Indigenous Australian novelist
DATE OF BIRTH=1957
PLACE OF BIRTH=Perth, Western Australia, Australia
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=