Breath (Winton) - Author Bio

Author Bio 
• Birth—August 4, 1960
• Raised—Albany, Western Australia
• Education—Curtin University of Technology
• Awards—Booker Prizer (1995); named "Living Treasure" by
   National Trust; Centenary Medal; Miles Franklin Award (3
   times); Commonwealth Writers Prize; many, many regional    awards.
• Currently—lives in Western Australia


Tim Winton is the preeminent Australian novelist of his generation. He has written twenty books, including the bestselling novels Cloudstreet, The Riders, and Dirt Music. (From the publishers.)

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Winton has been named a Living Treasure by the National Trust and awarded the Centenary Medal for service to literature and the community.[4] He is patron of the Tim Winton Award for Young Writers sponsored by the City of Subiaco, Western Australia

He has lived in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece and currently lives in Western Australia with his wife and three children.

While attending Curtin University of Technology, Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer. It went on to win The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1981, and launched his writing career. In fact, he wrote "the best part of three books while at university." His second book, Shallows, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1984. However, it wasn't until Cloudstreet was published in 1991 that his career, and economic future, was firmly established.

In 1995 Winton’s novel, The Riders, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, as was his 2002 book, Dirt Music. Both are currently being adapted for film. He has won many other prizes, including the Miles Franklin Award three times: for Shallows (1984), Cloudstreet (1992) and Dirt Music (2002). Cloudstreet is arguably his best-known work, regularly appearing in lists of Australia’s best-loved novels. Breath was released in 2008.

He writes for both for adults and children, and all his books are still in print. His work is published in eighteen different languages and has been successfully adapted for stage, screen and radio. On the publication of Dirt Music, he collaborated with broadcaster, Lucky Oceans, to produce a compilation CD, Dirt Music—Music for a Novel.

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." His themes often centre on an issue that is well described by the character Gail in The Turning. She says that "every vivid experience comes from your adolescence."

Winton re-uses place and, occasionally, characters from one book to another. Queenie Cookson, for example, is a character in Breath who also appears in Shallows and in one of the Lockie Leonard books.

Winton is actively involved in the Australian environmental movement. He is the patron of the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) and is passionately involved in many of their campaigns, notably their work in raising awareness about sustainable seafood consumption. He is also patron of the Stop the Toad Foundation (Inc). Winton has recently contributed to the whaling debate with an article on the Last Whale website, and he is a prominent supporter of the Save Moreton Bay organization, the Environment Defender’s Officeand Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

In 2003, he was awarded the inaugural Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Medal in recognition for his work in the campaign to save the Ningaloo Reef.

Winton keeps away from the public eye, except when a book comes out, unless it is to support an environmental issue. He told reviewer Jason Steger that "Occasionally they wheel me out for green advocacy stuff but that's the only kind of stuff I put my head up for." (From Wikipedia.)