Cirrus@Austlit

Born in Karrinyup, Western Australia, Tim Winton completed his high school education at Albany. Determined to be a writer from an early age, Winton subsequently studied creative writing at the West Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University). He became a professional writer and household name when, at the age of 21, he shared first prize in the 1981 Australian/Vogel National Literary Award for a manuscript that became An Open Swimmer (1982).

Several other books followed in the 1980s and he won his first Miles Franklin Award in 1984 for Shallows. He travelled overseas with his wife and young family in the late 1980s, but his work retained a strong attachment to the coastal regions of Western Australia, especially the areas around which he grew up. He returned to Western Australia to purchase a house on the coast and won his second Miles Franklin Literary Award in 1992, for Cloudstreet.

Nearly twenty years later, he was to adapt this novel for the screen with American writer Ellen Fontana, as the three-part series Cloudstreet, which won him a Western Australian Premier's Book Awards (Scripts) and drew nominations for both AACTA Awards and Logie Awards.

Winton has written a number of children's books; his award-winning 'Lockie Leonard Series' (published between 1990 and 1997) was adapted for television in 2007 as Lockie Leonard.

Other adaptations of Winton's works include John Ruane's film of That Eye, the Sky in 1994 and James Bogle's film of In the Winter Dark in 1998. His works Breath and The Turning have also been adapted to the screen more recently.

Winton has continued to draw international readerships and awards. His novels have been published in England and the United States of America, translated into a number of languages and adapted for the stage, television, and film. Among many other awards, The Riders was short-listed for the Booker Prize and he received his third Miles Franklin Literary Award for Dirt Music in 2002 and his fourth for Breath in 2008.

A passionate campaigner for social and environmental causes, Winton has held the post of vice-president of the Australian Marine Conservation Society and was the inaugural winner of the ASA Medal in recognition of his contribution to saving Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia. His autobiographical meditation, Land's Edge (1993), was accompanied by the photography of Trish Ainslie and Roger Garwod, and he has also contributed text and memoirs to several other books of photography, including Bill Bachmann's Local Colour (1994) and Richard Woldendrop's Down to Earth (1999). In 2016, he had a species of fish from the Kimberley region named after him, and in March 2017, he was named patron of the new Native Australian Animals Trust.

Most recently, Winton has published the novels The Shepherd's Hut and Juice.