Timothy John Winton was born on 4 August 1960[1] in Subiaco, an inner western suburb of Perth, Western Australia. He grew up in the northern Perth suburb of Karrinyup,[2][3] before he moved with his family to the regional city of Albany at the age of 12.[4]
Winton has lived in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece,[6] but currently lives in Western Australia.[7] He met his wife Denise when they were children at school. When he was 18 and recovering from a car accident, they reconnected as she was a student nurse. They married when Winton was 21 and she was 20, and had three children together.[6] They live in Fremantle, south of Perth.[7]
As his fame has grown, Winton has guarded his and his family's privacy. He rarely speaks in public yet he is known as "an affable, plain-speaking man of unaffected intelligence and deep emotions."[9]
Reception and honours
In 1995, Winton's The Riders was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction, as was his 2001 book, Dirt Music. Dirt Music (film) was released in 2019. He has won many other prizes, including the Miles Franklin Award a record four times: for Shallows (1984), Cloudstreet (1992), Dirt Music (2002) and Breath (2009). Cloudstreet regularly appears in lists of Australia's best-loved novels.[10]
All his books are still in print and have been published in eighteen different languages. His work has also been successfully adapted for stage, screen and radio.[11] On the publication of his novel, Dirt Music, he collaborated with broadcaster Lucky Oceans to produce a compilation CD, Dirt Music – Music for a Novel.[12]
The Tim Winton Young Writers Award, sponsored annually since 1993 by the City of Subiaco, recognises young writers in the Perth metropolitan area.[17] It is open to short story writers of primary school and secondary school age. Three compilations have been published: Destination Unknown (2001)[18]Life Bytes (2002),[19] and Hatched: Celebrating Twenty Years of the Tim Winton Award for Young Writers (2013). The latter features the winning story from each year of the award from 1993 to 2012.[20] Winton is the patron of the competition.[21]
Winton was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2023 King's Birthday Honours for "distinguished service to literature as an author and novelist, to conservation, and to environmental advocacy".[22]
Style and themes
Winton draws his prime inspiration from landscape and place, mostly coastal Western Australia. He has said "The place comes first. If the place isn't interesting to me then I can't feel it. I can't feel any people in it. I can't feel what the people are on about or likely to get up to."[23]
"His books are boisterous and lyrical by turns, warm-hearted in their depictions of family life but with characters that often have to be in extremis in order to find themselves. They have a wonderful feeling for the strange beauty of Australia; are frequently flavoured with Aussie vernacular expressions, and a good deal of emotional directness. They question macho role models (his books are full of strong women and troubled men) and are prepared to risk their realist credibility with enigmatic, even visionary endings."[24]
Winton keeps away from the public eye, unless promoting a new book or supporting an environmental issue. He told reviewer Jason Steger "Occasionally they wheel me out for green advocacy stuff but that's the only kind of stuff I put my head up for."[28]
In 2016, species of fish from the Kimberley region was named after him.[29]
In March 2017, Winton was named patron of the newly established Native Australian Animals Trust.[30] He has always featured the environment and the Australian landscape in his writings. The trust was established to help research and teaching about native animals and their environment. Associate Professor Tim Dempster, School of Biosciences is quoted as saying, "Australia has a unique and charismatic animal fauna, but our state of knowledge about it is poor. Indeed species can go extinct before we even know of their existence. We have much to learn from our fauna, and a pressing need to do so."[31]
In 2023, a mini documentary series was released by the ABC called Ningaloo Nyinggulu, which he was the presenter for.
The Deep (1998) – picture book illustrated by Karen Louise
Non-fiction
Land's Edge (1993) – with Trish Ainslie and Roger Garwood
Local Colour: Travels in the Other Australia (1994), republished in the U.S. as Australian Colors: Images of the Outback (1998) – photography and text by Bill Bachman, additional text by Tim Winton
"How the Reef was Won", The Bulletin, vol. 121 no. 6384, 5 August 2003
"Landing", A Place on Earth: An Anthology of Nature Writing from Australia and North America, Mark Tredinnick (ed), University of Nebraska Press and University of New South Wales Press, 2003
^((cited by Steger, Jason (2008) "It's a risky business" in The Sydney Morning Herald, 25–27 April 2008, Books Awards Hall of Fame|website=State Library of Western Australia|access-date=23 January 2017))
