Clare Wright

Clare Alice Wright (born 14 May 1969) is an American Australian historian, author and broadcaster. She is an associate professor in history at La Trobe University, and was the winner of the 2014 Stella Prize.^[1]

Career

Wright holds a BA (Hons) in History from the University of Melbourne (1991), an MA in Public History from Monash University (1993) and a PhD in Australian Studies from the University of Melbourne (2002). From 2004 to 2009, she was an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow at La Trobe University. She was the executive officer of the History Council of Victoria from 2003 to 2004. Wright has worked as a political speechwriter, university lecturer, historical consultant, and radio and television broadcaster.

She is the author of a number of books which garnered both critical and popular acclaim. Her second book, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, took her ten years to research and write. It won the 2014 Stella Prize and 2014 Nib Waverley Library Award for Literature, as well as being shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, Queensland Literary Awards, NSW Premier's History Prize, the WA Premier's Book Awards and the Victorian Community History Awards and was longlisted for a Walkely Award. In 2015, Wright published We Are the Rebels, a revised edition of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka for Young Adult readers. We Are the Rebels was shortlisted for the Children's Book Council of Australia's Eve Pownall Award for Information Books.

In 2012 Wright researched, wrote and presented the television history documentary Utopia Girls: How Women Won the Vote, which was broadcast on ABC TV. Utopia Girls was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's History Awards for Best Multimedia History. She developed, co-wrote and appears in the four-part docudrama series The War That Changed Us, which was first broadcast on ABC TV in August 2014 to commemorate the centenary of World War I. The War That Changed Us won an ATOM Award for Best Documentary and was nominated for a Logie for Most Outstanding Factual Program.

Wright has appeared as an expert interviewee in many other television history documentaries, including Dirty Business: How Mining Made Australia (SBS), The Royal Wreck of Gold (Foxtel) and Bodyline: The Ultimate Challenge (ABC1). She has appeared in both the Australian and UK versions of Who Do You Think You Are?

In 2016, Wright won the Alice Literary Award, presented by the Australian Society for Women Writers, for 'distinguished and long-term contribution to literature by an Australian woman'.

In 2017, Wright wrote and presented 'Shooting the Past', a history radio series and podcast for ABC Radio National. A second season has been commissioned for 2018.

Wright is a Board Director at The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas and a member of the Expert Advisory Panel for the Australian Republic Movement.

Since 2014, Wright has been a Principal Research Fellow and Associate Professor of History at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

Books

• — (2003). Beyond the Ladies Lounge: Australia's Female Publicans. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press. ISBN 9780522850710.
• — (2013). The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. Melbourne: Text Publishing. ISBN 9781922147370.
• — (2016). We Are the Rebels: The Women and Men who Made Eureka. Melbourne: Text Publishing. ISBN 9781922182784.

Personal life

Wright was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1969. She migrated to Australia in 1974 with her mother. She lives in Melbourne with her husband, furniture designer and craftsman Damien Wright, and their three children.^[2]

References

External links

• Official website