Lisa Gorton

Gorton was born in 1972.[1] She attended St Catherine's School in Toorak, Victoria, graduating in 1989. She gained a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne, studying poetry with Chris Wallace-Crabbe.[2][3] She then won a Rhodes Scholarship which enabled her to complete a Master of Arts and then PhD at the University of Oxford.[4] Her doctorate was on John Donne, for which she won the John Donne Society Award for Distinguished Publication in Donne Studies.[5] While at Oxford she worked as a tutor for a time at Rhodes University in South Africa.[2]

Gorton returned and worked for McKinsey and Company and Scaffidi Hugh-Jones. She then became a full-time writer.[2]

In 1994 she was awarded the inaugural Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize.[6]

At TEDxSydney 2010 Gorton gave a poetry reading.[7]

Having previously worked as poetry editor for the literary journal, Gorton was the Australian Book Review's Poet of the Month in October 2019.[8][9] Gorton has contributed essays to the Australian Book Review[8] and the Sydney Review of Books.[10]

She is the grand-daughter of the former Prime Minister John Gorton.[6]

• 1994 Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize[6]
• 2008 Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry (then the C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry) for Press Release[11]
• 2013 Queensland Literary Awards Judith Wright Calanthe Award, shortlisted for Hotel Hyperion
• 2014 Western Australian Premier’s Prize for Poetry, shortlisted for Hotel Hyperion[12]
• 2014 Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for Excellence in Literature for Hotel Hyperion[13]
• 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, joint winner for The Life of Houses[14]
• 2016 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards People's Choice Award for The Life of Houses[15]
• 2020 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, shortlisted for Empirical[16]