Clare Wright

Wright was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1969. She migrated to Australia in 1974 with her mother.[1]

Wright holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours) in History from the University of Melbourne (1991), a Master of Arts in Public History from Monash University (1993) and a Doctor of Philosophy in Australian Studies from the University of Melbourne (2002).[2]

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 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[3] 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 Award, the WA Premier's Book Awards and the Victorian Community History Awards, and was longlisted for a Walkley 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 Television), 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 Society for Women Writers, for "distinguished and long-term contribution to literature by an Australian woman".[4]

Wright was invited to present the 2018 Dymphna Clark Memorial Lecture and spoke on the topic, You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians who won the vote and inspired the world.

In 2019, her book, You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired the World, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards,[5] shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards University of Southern Queensland History Book Award,[6] and longlisted for the CHASS Australia Book Prize[7] (an annual prize awarded by the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences)[8]

Wright was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2020 Australia Day Honours in recognition of her "service to literature, and to historical research."[9]

As of April 2020, Wright writes and presents Shooting the Past, a history radio series and podcast for ABC Radio National.[10] Wright is the co-host of the La Trobe University podcast Archive Fever.

She is a former Board Director at the Wheeler Centre and a member of the Expert Advisory Panel for the Australian Republic Movement. Since 2014, Wright has been a Principal Research Fellow at La Trobe University in Melbourne. In 2019, she was promoted to full Professor. As of April 2020, Wright is ARC (Australian Research Council) Future Fellow, History.[11]

• Wright, Clare (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.
• — (2018). You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired the World. Melbourne: Text Publishing. ISBN 9781925603934.

She lives in Melbourne with her husband, furniture designer and craftsman Damien Wright, and their three children.[1]

• Official website