Author’s Sense Of Identity

Acclaimed WA author Professor Kim Scott will deliver the 2012 Miles Franklin Literary Award oration at Curtin University tonight.

Scott was the first indigenous author to win the Miles Franklin, Australia’s most prestigious literary award, for his 1999 novel Benang – From the Heart and won it for a second time last year for his most recent novel, That Deadman Dance.

He said he wanted to use the oration to look at indigenous literature’s role in building a sense of identity, belonging and place.

“Since the 19th century there has been a great propensity for the Noongar language to move towards literature as a written form,” Scott said. “I want to examine how literature is an expression of who we are as Australians and how Aboriginal literature can play a big role in shaping that.”

He will also explore how the 19th century characters in That Deadman Dance might have gone about writing a historical novel today.

“I don’t think they would be as polemical as some of us are now,” he said. “They would be more playful, more concerned with storytelling and communicating.”