Tim Winton

Tim Winton was born in 1960 in Western Australia where he still lives. He attended a Creative Writing Course at Curtin University in Perth, and it was while there that he began his first novel An Open Swimmer. This was entered for The Australian/Vogel Award in 1981. It won and Winton has never looked back, utilising his considerable talent to maintain a full-time writing career. Something of an oddity for any Australian writer but especially for one of his age.

There must be something about Winton that leaves book reviewers more than a little non-plussed. In 1991, after the release of Cloudstreet in Britain, Martin Wroe of The Independent described him as "sitting in a hotel foyer, he cuts an unusual figure, three feet of brown hair trailing down his wide back, T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots." And Anne Chisholm of The Daily Telegraph found him "shortish and roundish, with a freckled oval face, shrewd, friendly brown eyes and waist-length curly dark hair in a long pigtail." Maybe it's the hair which throws them. In any event it doesn't make an appearance in any publicity shots, with the preference here being for either a dreamy faraway look, or eyes-closed, half-asleep expressions combined with a languid body posture. Very odd.

With The Riders Winton made his first appearance on The Booker Prize shortlist in 1995, although it was felt at the time that Cloudstreet only just missed making the list in 1992. The novel did, however, win The Miles Franklin Award in 1992, to follow his first win of that award with Shallows in 1984.

In addition The Riders won the best novel award in the South East Asia and South Pacific section of The Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1995.

Winton was again shortlisted for The Booker Prize in 2002 for his novel Dirt Music, but lost out in a very strong field.

In recent years Tim Winton has become the patron of the Tim Winton Award for Young Writers which is sponsored by the City of Subiaco in Western Australia.

Although a reluctant media performer, Winton appeared on the ABC TV program "Enough Rope" with Andrew Denton in 2004, and a transcript of the program is available.

Tim Winton lives in Western Australia with his wife and three children.