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Tim Winton began his first novel, An Open Swimmer (1982), at the age of 19, while on a Creative Writing course at Curtin University, Perth. It won the Australian/Vogel National Literary Award, and he has since made his living as a full-time writer.
Born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1960, he is the author of several novels for adults, including Shallows (1986), a novel set in a whaling town, and Cloudstreet (1991), the tale of two working-class families rebuilding their lives, both won prestigious Miles Franklin Awards in Australia. A theatrical adaptation of Cloudstreet toured Australia, Europe and the USA to universal acclaim. His novel That Eye, the Sky (1986) was adapted for theatre by Justin Monjo and Richard Roxburgh, and also made into a film. A second film adaptation was made of In the Winter Dark (1988), featuring Brenda Blethyn. The Riders (1995) was shortlisted for the 1995 Booker Prize for Fiction, and also won a Commonwealth Writers Prize. Many of his books are set in his familiar landscapes of Western Australia.
His books include Dirt Music (2001), winner of several awards and shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and The Turning (2005), which tells 17 overlapping stories. Breath (2008) won the Miles Franklin Award in 2009. His latest novels are Eyrie (2013) and The Shepherd’s Hut (2018).
Tim Winton is patron of the Tim Winton Award for Young Writers sponsored by the City of Subiaco, Western Australia. Active in the environmental movement in Australia he has been named a Living Treasure by the National Trust, and awarded the Centenary Medal for service to literature and the community. He has lived in Greece, France and Ireland, but has now settled in Western Australia with his family.
‘It’s unlikely Winton has ever written as well as he writes in Breath… Its seeming simplicity is deceptive, for beneath its pared-back surfaces lies all the steel of a major novelist operating at full throttle in a territory he has spent 25 years making his own.’ James Bradley, The Age
‘A novelist who, to a peerless degree, has learnt how to do it…Breath seems to cut through everything, and to speak with unusual honesty.’ Philip Hensher, Spectator
‘An absorbing, powerful and deeply beautiful novel, a meditation on surfing which becomes a rumination about the very stuff of existence.’ Helen Gordon, The Observer
‘This brilliant book may well turn out to be the finest thing that Winton has done.’ Andrew Riemer, Sydney Morning Herald
‘Breath is about moving out of your depth, getting in over your head, having your soul damaged beyond repair …But against all this pointless sorrow, there remains the evanescent beauty of the world, and Winton matches that with limitlessly beautiful prose.’ Carolyn See, Washington Post
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