Tim Winton

Timothy John Winton (born 4 August 1960) is an Australian writer.

He has written novels, children's books, non-fiction books, and short stories.

Timothy John Winton was born on 4 August 1960 in Subiaco, an inner western suburb of Perth, Western Australia.

He grew up in the northern Perth suburb of Karrinyup, before he moved with his family to the regional city of Albany at the age of 12.

Whilst at the Western Australian Institute of Technology, Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer, which won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1981, launching his writing career.

He has stated that he wrote "the best part of three books while at university".

His second book, Shallows, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1984.

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.

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.

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.

Winton has been named a Living Treasure by the National Trust and awarded the Centenary Medal for service to literature and the community.

In 2023, Winton was awarded the ABIA Lloyd O’Neil Award for outstanding service to the Australian book industry.

Curtin University has named a lecture theatre in his honour.

Winton published Cloudstreet in 1991, which properly established his writing career.

He has continued to publish fiction, plays and non-fiction material.

Winton has lived in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece, but currently lives in Western Australia.

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.

They live in Fremantle, south of Perth.

Winton’s younger brother, Andrew Winton, is a musician and a high school chaplain.

The Tim Winton Young Writers Award, sponsored annually since 1993 by the City of Subiaco, recognises young writers in the Perth metropolitan area.

It is open to short story writers of primary school and secondary school age.

The latter features the winning story from each year of the award from 1993 to 2012.

Winton is the patron of the competition.

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".

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."

Dr Jules Smith for the British Council wrote about Winton,

"'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.'"

Winton revisits place and, occasionally, characters from one book to another.

In 1995, Winton's The Riders was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction, as was his 2001 book, Dirt Music.

In 1997, he was named a Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia, and has won the Miles Franklin Award four times.

Three compilations have been published: Destination Unknown (2001) Life Bytes (2002), and Hatched: Celebrating Twenty Years of the Tim Winton Award for Young Writers (2013).

His younger sister is Sharyn O'Neill, who in 2018 became the Public Sector Commissioner of Western Australia, after 12 years as Director General of the WA Education Department.

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."

Dirt Music (film) was released in 2019.