Cirrus@Austlit

Christos Tsolkias, the son of Greek immigrants, grew up in the working class, predominantly Greek, Melbourne inner city suburb of Richmond where he continues to live and write. Tsolkias attended state schools including Blackburn High School and completed an Arts degree at the University of Melbourne in 1987. Tsiolkas is a novelist, an essayist, a screenwriter, a film critic, and a playwright. 

Christos has won many awards including the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal, the Melbourne Best Writing Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Christos has been shortlisted for several awards including the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama, and the Australian Book Industry (ABIA) Award for Literary Fiction Book of the year. His novels Loaded and Dead Europe were adapted into film, and The Slap and Barracuda have been adapted for television. 

His first novel, Loaded (1995) won the Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist of the Year Award. A controversial debut, Loaded addresses questions of Australian identity, race and racism, masculinity, and homosexuality. An evocative image of contemporary Australia, Loaded was initially rejected for publication and described as ‘racist and homophobic.’ 

Illustrating Tsolkias’ talent across mediums, In 1999 he became the joint winner of the AWGIE Awards Major Award for the collaborative play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? 

Although The Jesus Man (1999) and Dead Europe (2005) would go on to receive critical acclaim, it was Tsolkias’ 2008 novel The Slap that made Tsolkias a figure in world literature. The Slap won the ALS Gold Medal, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Australian Book Industry Awards International Success Award and Literary Fiction Book of the Year Award. The novel was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and longlisted for The Booker Prize. The Slap was developed into television in 2011 and has been translated into French, Russian, Dutch, Slovenian, Greek, Italian, Korean and Chinese.

His next novel, Barracuda (2013), was shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year and the ALS Gold Medal. Merciless Gods (2014), Damascus (2019), and Seven and a Half (2021) each receiving critical acclaim with Damascus winning the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and Seven and a Half being longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

The In-Between (2023) is another compelling story of contemporary Australia, shortlisted for the South Australian Literary Award for Fiction and the ABIA Book of the year, and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award.

Tsiolkas is also an award-winning playwright, essayist and screenwriter. His interest in film is evidenced in his writing the first monograph in Currency Press's Australian Film Classics series on Schepisi's film, The Devil's Playground, and his writing and directing of short films. He has also collaborated with photographer Zoe Ali on a series of exhibitions dealing with refuge and exile: Destination Unknown 1, 2 & 3, and on a Blake Prize 2011 shortlisted work 'A New Jerusalem: Faith and the City', combining Ali's photographs of places of worship in Melbourne with texts from the Bible, Koran and Torah with his own writing on contemporary life and faith.