Author, academic and grandmother Debra Dank has won four prizes at the NSW Premier's Literary Prize for her debut memoir, We Come With This Place.
The Gudanji/Wakaja woman claimed the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, the Indigenous Writers' Prize and the 2023 Book of the Year.
She claimed a total of $85,000 for her wins and made history as the first author to claim four awards in one year.
The book, which is considered tribute to Dank's family and Country, was hailed by chair of the judging panel Miles Franklin winner and Bundjalung author Melissa Lucashenko as a showcase of "all that First Nations writing can and should be":
"The writing is culturally rigorous and deeply thoughtful. Dank seeks to expand the horizons of the reader in a way which centres, not the author as an individual, but rather her Country and the wider community she has grown within," she said.
"Most of all, her memoir shows a powerful path forward from colonial trauma towards a space of mutual respect and self-determining futures."
We Come With This Place by Debra Dank has taken out four prizes at the state's top literary awards. Credit: Allen and Unwin Publishers
She thanked her family, her parents and her children, in their role in her writing.
"I have always been a reader, very very privilege to have been raised in remote places by two amazing parents," she said.
"My Dad, a Gudanji/Wakaja man who did not read or write English, but insisted by god you will learn. My mum, a very very young mum . . . taught me to read by the time I was about four, who also insisted by god you will learn.
"My children have been so integral to everything that I have done . . . I thank my son for taking the time to sit with me, because this writing is part of my PhD study. My son had the patience to sit and listen and discuss a whole range of things."
The impact of fracking for her grandchildren
Dank thanked her mob, and spoke about the current threats to her Country.
"None of it would be possible without the amazing Gudanji/Wakaja mob from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory," she said.
"If you enjoyed my book . . . would you please take a moment or a bit longer to consider what is happening on my Country - my Country in the Beetaloo Basin is being fracked.
Earthworks for gas fracking operation in Beetaloo Basin stopped by NT Supreme Court injunction. Source: Supplied
"My soon-to-be 13-year-old granddaughter. . . will not be able to go home so much to experience what her mother did, what her aunt and her uncle did."
Dank's work was also shortlisted for 2023 Stella Prize and featured on the Grattan Institute's Prime Minister's Summer Reading List for 2022.
Other First Nations winners
There were two other Indigenous winners at the awards.
Corey Tutt and Blak Douglas took home the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature for their work, The First Scientists: Deadly Inventions and Innovations from Australia’s First Peoples.
While Whitefella Yella Tree by palawa writer Dylan Van Den Berg won the Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting.
NSW Premier, Chris Minns congratulated the winners.
“Our Government is pleased to celebrate our most talented writers and I’m thrilled that this year’s awards in particular highlight the incredible achievements of Gudanji/Wakaja woman, author Dr Debra Dank," he said.
"On behalf of the NSW Government, I congratulate all winners and shortlisted authors of the 2023 Awards whose works inspire, educate and delight readers and writers alike.”
