Tara June Winch wins the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award!

The Yield, a powerful novel of Indigenous language, storytelling and identity by Tara June Winch, has just been revealed as the winner of the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award!

The winner was revealed in a live YouTube broadcast held in collaboration with The Copyright Agency, due to ongoing restrictions related to COVID-19. Managed by Perpetual, the $60,000 prize is awarded to an Australian work of significant literary merit at the behest of the author Stella Miles Franklin.

Tara June Winch

Tara June Winch, a Wiradjuri woman, is the fourth Indigenous winner of the prize, joining Melissa Lucashenko (2019 – Too Much Lip), Kim Scott (2000 – Benang, 2011 – That Deadman Dance) and Alexis Wright (2007 – Carpentaria). Her novel was selected from a shortlist comprised of four previously-nominated authors – Tony Birch, Peggy Frew, Philip Salom and Carrie Tiffany – and John Hughes, who was nominated for the first time.

Winch said, “I’m honoured to be among brilliant colleagues on the longlist and shortlist, our power is in the many stories and not only the one. The historical presence of both Tony Birch and myself on the shortlist signals to the publishing industry that we can write our own stories, and that we don’t want to be spoken for. I hope this event also encourages the next generation of Indigenous voices, to know there is a space here for you in the industry, and in the minds and hearts of a new era of readers. We need to hear voices from across the nation to truly immerse ourselves in the song of Australia.”

Speaking for the judging panel, Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian of the State Library of NSW, said,

“In English ‘yield’ signifies what one takes from the land. In Wiradjuri it is ‘the things you give to, the movement, the space between things: baayanha.’ The Yield explores the legacies of colonial violence, shame, intergenerational trauma and environmental destruction. Winch celebrates and amplifies the contemporary resurgence and relevance of the Wiradjuri language. The Yield, a story of pain, loss, resilience and hope, is a novel where the past is the present is the future.”

Congratulations Tara!

—The Yield by Tara June Winch (Penguin Books Australia) is out now. Find out more about the Miles Franklin Literary Award here.

The Yield

by Tara June Winch

The yield in English is the reaping, the things that man can take from the land. In the language of the Wiradjuri yield is the things you give to, the movement, the space between things- baayanha.

Knowing that he will soon die, Albert 'Poppy' Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. His life has been spent on the banks of the Murrumby River at Prosperous House, on Massacre Plains. Albert is determined to pass on the language of his people and everything that was ever remembered. He finds the words on the wind...

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