Timothy John Winton (born 4 August 1960) is an Australian writer and environmental activist. He has written novels, children's books, non-fiction books and short stories.
His most well-known novel, and the one that launched his career, was Cloudstreet, in 1991. He is also known for the novels Dirt Music (2001) and Breath (2009), as well as collections of short fiction, such as The Turning (2004), and several works of children's and young adult fiction, including Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo. His latest novel is the 2024 climate fiction novel Juice. Many of his novels and stories have been adapted for stage and screen, and have been translated into many languages. Winton has also written some non-fiction, including his 2016 memoir The Boy Behind the Curtain.
Winton is actively involved in the Australian environmental movement, and has roles in a number of conservation organisations. A new species of fish, Winton's grunter, was named after him after its discovery was announced in 2016. A three-part series written and narrated by him, called Ningaloo Nyinggulu, aired on ABC Television in 2023.
In 1997, he was named a Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia, and, among many other awards, has won the Miles Franklin Award four times. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2023.
Early life and education 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.
He studied at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University), graduating with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English in 1980, followed by a Graduate Diploma in English in 1981.
Career Writing While still a student, 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. Winton published Cloudstreet in 1991, which properly established his writing career.
On the publication of Dirt Music, he collaborated with broadcaster Lucky Oceans to produce a compilation CD, Dirt Music – Music for a Novel, released in 2001.
He has continued to publish fiction, plays and non-fiction material.
Style and themes Winton draws his prime inspiration from landscape and place, mostly coastal Western Australia. In a 2008 interview about his 2009 novel Breath, he 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". [read online via NewsBank] In an interview about his 2019 novel The Shepherd's Hut, he repeated "The place comes first, as it always does, and the landscape determines the parameters of the story; it throws the people up (one way or another) and they're what and who I have to work with. I guess by now I'm used to submitting to the environmental logic underpinning it all. The figures literally emerge from the landscape".
Winton's works often include underlying themes of violence, desire and belonging. Breath is about risks that young people take, and the sea's role in soothing the spirit and emotions as well as having the potential to be dangerous. The sea and surfing are often present in his novels, and he also employs a technique which he calls "character overlaps", in which the same character turns up in different stories or novels.
Environmental advocacy In his writing Winton has always featured the environment and the Australian landscape in his writings.
His 2024 climate fiction novel Juice has been called "a potent vision of the future that points a finger at the complacency of the present", as it takes a look at the impact of climate change.
Organisations Winton is actively involved in the Australian environmental movement. He has roles in a number of conservation organisations, in particular, the Australian Marine Conservation Society. He was vice-president of the WA branch from 1998, and has been a national patron since 2006. He has been involved in many of their campaigns, notably their work in raising awareness about sustainable seafood consumption in 2008,AMCS Sustainable Seafood Guide a campaign against shark finning in 2008, and the Protect Ningaloo campaign, since 2018.
In March 2017, Winton was named inaugural patron of the newly established Native Australian Animals Trust, based at the University of Melbourne's School of BioSciences The trust was established to help research and teaching about native animals and their environment.
Other roles in conservation organisations have included: Advocate, Environmental Defenders Office, current as of 2023 Advocate, Australian Wildlife Conservancy, since 2001 Patron, Murujuga World Heritage Summit, 2018 Patron, Stop the Toad Foundation, 2005–2010 Advocate, Save Ningaloo Reef, 2000–2003 Advocate and co-founder, "Protect Ningaloo" Patron, Jubilee Australia
Television In 2023, ABC Television released a three-part documentary series called Ningaloo Nyinggulu, about the Ningaloo reef on the north-western coast of Western Australia. The series was written and narrated by Winton, and produced by Artemis Media and Matter of Factual. It was nominated for an AACTA Award for Best Documentary or Factual Program, and won Innovation Award for Television in the Western Australia Screen Culture Awards as well as Best Natural History or Wildlife program at the Asian TV Awards in Ho Chi Minh City. It is available for viewing on ABC iview.
Recognition and honours
Winton's books have been well reviewed by critics and many have been shortlisted for or won awards. Several novels and short stories have been adapted for stage and screen. All his books are still in print and have been published in many different languages. His work has also been successfully adapted for stage, screen and radio. He won the Miles Franklin Award a record four times: for Shallows (1984), Cloudstreet (1992), Dirt Music (2002) and Breath (2009).
Winton was named a Living Treasure by the National Trust in 1997,Living Treasures list, National Trust website and was in January 2001 was awarded the Centenary Medal "service to Australian society and literature". In 1999, he received a Friends of the National Library of Australia Celebration Award.
In 2003, Winton was awarded the inaugural Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Medal in recognition for his work in the campaign to save the Ningaloo reef. In 2006, he was included in The Bulletin "100 Most Influential Australians". In 2009, his alma mater Curtin University named a lecture theatre in his honour.
In 2016, it was announced that one of 20 recently discovered species of fish from the Kimberley region would be named after him. It was officially named "Winton's grunter", or Hannia wintoni, in 2020. The fish is a 25-centimetre-long grunter found in a Prince Regent River tributary.
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". In the same year, he was awarded the ABIA Lloyd O'Neil Award for outstanding service to the Australian book industry.
In 2024, Winton was the subject of a painted portrait by Sydney-based artist Laura Jones, which won the Archibald Prize that year. Having an interest in how humans interact with their environment and being an admirer of Winton, she was inspired to paint him after watching his 2023 TV documentary Ningaloo Nyinggulu and by his speech urging artists to use their work to critique the lack of action by governments on climate change,
Tim Winton Young Writers Award (1992–2022) The Tim Winton Young Writers Award was launched in 1992 and thence sponsored annually by the City of Subiaco until 2022. Winton was patron of the award, and handed out the awards at a ceremony.
The award recognised young writers in the Perth metropolitan area, and is open to short-story writers of primary school and secondary school age. 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). The latter features the winning story from each year of the award from 1993 to 2012. In 2022, there were over 1300 entries.
In 2023, Craig Silvey became patron of the award, which was renamed the Craig Silvey Award for Young Writers. However, it was announced in January 2026 that Silvey would have no further association with the awards, after Silvey had been charged with possessing and distributing child exploitation material.
Personal life Winton 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. As his fame has grown, Winton has guarded his and his family's privacy and rarely speaks in public, except to promote a new book or to support an environmental issue.
Winton's younger brother, Andrew Winton, is a musician and a high school chaplain. 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.
Winton has lived in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece. As of 2016 he was living in Western Australia. Bibliography
Novels An Open Swimmer (1982) Shallows (1984) That Eye, the Sky (1986) In the Winter Dark (1988) Cloudstreet (1991) The Riders (1994) Blueback (1997) Dirt Music (2001) Breath (2008) Eyrie (2013) The Shepherd's Hut (2018) Juice (2024)
Short fiction Collections Scission (1985) A Blow, A Kiss (1985) Minimum of Two (1987) The Collected Shorter Novels of Tim Winton (1995) The Turning (2004) StoriesShort stories unless otherwise noted. TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotesAbbreviation2003"Abbreviation"/"Ten viet tat", Truyen ngan Uc/Australian Short Stories, Rose Moxham (ed), Trinh Lu (translator), Hoi Nhaa Van, 2005Aquifer2000The Beacon Best of 2001, Junot Diaz (ed), Beacon Press, 2001Big world2004Journeys: Modern Australian Short Stories, Barry Oakley (ed), Five Mile Press, 2007Cockleshell2004"Cockleshell", Harvard Review, No. 27, Christina Thompson (ed), 2004Small mercies2006 Novella
Plays Rising Water (2011) Signs of Life (2012) Shrine (2013)
Children's and young adult fiction Jesse (1988) The Lockie Leonard trilogy (1990–1997) for young adults, including: Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo (1990) Lockie Leonard, Scumbuster (1993) Lockie Leonard, Legend (1997) The Bugalugs Bum Thief (1991) The Deep (1998) – picture book illustrated by Karen Louise
Non-fiction Land's Edge (1993) – with Trish Ainslie and Roger Garwood Local Colour: Travels in the Other Australia (1994), republished in the U.S. as Australian Colors: Images of the Outback (1998) – photography and text by Bill Bachman, additional text by Tim Winton Down to Earth: Australian Landscapes (1999) – text by Tim Winton and photographs by Richard Woldendorp "How the Reef was Won", The Bulletin, vol. 121 no. 6384, 5 August 2003 "Landing", A Place on Earth: An Anthology of Nature Writing from Australia and North America, Mark Tredinnick (ed), University of Nebraska Press and University of New South Wales Press, 2003 Smalltown (2009) – text by Tim Winton and photographs by Martin MischkulnigSmalltown Island Home (2015) Tide-Lands – Idris Murphy (2015) text by Tim Winton and art by Idris Murphy The Boy Behind the Curtain (2016 memoir) – also available as 7-CD pack, read by Winton, pub. ABC/Bolinda
Adaptations Stage and radio