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Novelist Tara June Winch was born near Sydney in 1983. She is of Wiradjuri, Afghan, and English heritage. In 2004, she won the David Unaipon Award for Indigenous Writers for her first novel, Swallow the Air, published in 2006. The work also received the 2006 Victorian Premier's Award for Indigenous Writers.
(11/10/06)
Congratulations on both the David Unaipon Award and the Victorian Premier's Award for Swallow the Air. Unaipon is an interesting figure in Australian culture; could you tell the readers of Antipodes something about him?
TJW: He's a Ngandgeri man from South Australia. Prior to being approached about the Unaipon I actually hadn't heard of him and I suppose that's mainly because of the way we are taught Australian history in state schools, which is in a white Anglicised way and doesn't involve much Aboriginal history. Since the Unaipon, I've gained a better understanding of who he was. He had such an amazing and extensive career and life. It's a long journey to keep discovering things he has done and all the work he has written. He was an inventor and a writer. He had so many roles, I suppose, especially in the South Australian community, with Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
Now, let's turn to your novel, which is a very moving "coming of age" story but the final state of awareness is quite ambiguous. How would you describe fifteen-yearOld May Gibson's journey and where she ends up?
TJW: May ends up coming back to where she started-coming full circle. It's not like circumstances just miraculously change for Aboriginal people, or May's family. The problems are still there and I think that's what I was trying to highlight that it's not all going to be ok and May, the character, has a better understanding of who her self and this may help her deal wirh reality better.
There're a lot of layers in the ending and a lot of things that were going rhrough my head about being taken away from place, a lot about the land. Her family and her family's history have so many parallels with the pain of not belonging to the land they inhabit, this transposes to the everyday shit, coping, alcohol and the mental effect of the next generations....