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Melissa Lucashenko
Lucashenko for Griffith Review in 2019
Born	1967 (age 56–57) Brisbane, Australia
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Australian
Genre	Adult literary fiction, literary non-fiction and novels for teenagers
Notable works	Too Much Lip
Notable awards	Miles Franklin Award
Website
www.melissa-lucashenko.com

Melissa Lucashenko is an Indigenous Australian writer of adult literary fiction and literary non-fiction, who has also written novels for teenagers.

In 2013 at the Walkley Awards, she won the "Feature Writing Long (over 4000 words) Award" for her piece Sinking Below Sight: Down and Out in Brisbane and Logan. In 2019, she won the Miles Franklin Award for Too Much Lip.

Early life and education

Melissa Lucashenko was born in 1967 in Brisbane, Australia. Her heritage is Bundjalung and European (Ukrainian). She is a graduate of Griffith University (1990), with an honours degree in public policy.

In 1992, she was a founding member of Sisters Inside, an organisation which supports women and girls in prison.

Writing career

She has said that when she began writing seriously "there was still a glaring hole in Australian literature", with almost no prominent Aboriginal voices and with only the University of Queensland Press and a few other small outlets publishing the work of Aboriginal writers. When asked whether she considers herself primarily a writer, or an Aboriginal writer, she writes that the question runs into semantic difficulties, because the word means different things to different people.

Early work

Lucashenko's first work to be published was the novel Steam Pigs (1997), which won the Dobbie Literary Award for Australian women's fiction. It was also a short-list nominee for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and the regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

In 1998, she released the novel Killing Darcy, which won the Royal Blind Society's Talking Book Award for young readers (also referred to as the Aurora Prize in several secondary sources). It was also a finalist for the 1998 Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel and named on the 1998 James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award longlist.

In 1999 her third novel, Hard Yards was published and was a finalist in both the 1999 NSW Premier's Literary Awards and the 2001 Courier-Mail Book of the Year. In 2002 her fourth novel Too Flash, written for young adults, was published.

Critical success

Lucashenko's fifth novel, Mullumbimby, won the prestigious Deloitte Fiction Book Award in 2013 and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing in 2014, as well as being nominated for several other awards. In 2015 it was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.

In 2019 her sixth novel Too Much Lip won the Miles Franklin Award and Queensland Premier's Award. The novel was also shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Judges called it "...a fearless, searing and unvarnished portrait of generational trauma cut through with acerbic humour." Cenozoic Pictures optioned Too Much Lip for a screen adaptation, with Lucashenko as a co-writer and co-creator alongside Cenozoic's Veronica Gleeson.

Edenglassie, a seventh novel released in 2023, won her the Queensland Premier's Award for a second time, as well as the Victorian Premier's Literary Award. In late 2024, she won the ARA Historical Novel Prize, commended for capturing "the brutal realities of colonisation while celebrating the resilience of Indigenous cultures".

Non-fiction writing

Lucashenko is also an accomplished essayist, winning the 2013 "Feature Writing Long (over 4000 words)" Walkley Award for Sinking below sight: Down and out in Brisbane and Logan. Speaking about this essay, Lucashenko said that she was partly informed by her studies in public policy: "...one thing I was trying to bring out in the piece was the odd mix of structural factors and just sheer luck, good and bad, that makes up people's lives. All of these women are poor because of the violence and because of intergenerational poverty, and those things can be attacked in policy and should be attacked in policy.".

Personal life and family

In March 2014, The Moth Radio Hour aired a recording of Lucashenko recounting the story of moving with her husband and daughter back to the Aboriginal lands in New South Wales (where her great-grandmother grew up), and subsequent divorce from her husband and mental illness of her daughter.

Nominations and awards

Bibliography

Novels

• —— (1997). Steam Pigs. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702229350.
• —— (1999). Hard Yards. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702230806.
• —— (2002). Uptown Girl. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702233340.
• —— (2013). Mullumbimby. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702239199.
• —— (2018). Too Much Lip. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702259968.
• —— (2023). Edenglassie. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702266126.

YA Novels

• —— (1998). Killing Darcy. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702230417.
• —— (2002). Too Flash. IAD Press. ISBN 9781864650488.

Essays

• ——. "I'm Not Racist, but." (PDF). self-published.
• ——. "Who Let the Dogs Out?" (PDF). self-published.
• —— (2004). "Not Quite White in the Head". Griffith Review (edition 2: Dreams of Land).
• —— (2005). "Our Bodies". Griffith Review (edition 4: Making Perfect Bodies).
• —— (2005). "Globalisation, Kimberley Style". Griffith Review (edition 6: Our Global Face).
• —— (2007). "How Green Is My Valley?". Griffith Review (edition 12: Hot Air).
• —— (2009). "On the Same Page, Right?". Griffith Review (edition 26: Stories for Today).
• —— (2009). "The Silent Majority". Griffith Review (edition 26: Stories for Today).
• —— (2013). "Sinking Below Sight". Griffith Review (edition 41: Now We Are Ten).

• —— (2013). "History's Footnote, or, a Wolvi Incident". In Jane Caro (ed.). Destroying the Joint: Why Women Have to Change the World. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702249907.
• —— (2020). "It's No Accident That Blak Australia Has Survived the Pandemic So Well. Survival Is What We Do". The Guardian.

List of all essays in Griffith Review

• "Melissa Lucashenko". Griffith Review.

Footnotes

1. ^ So far no primary sources to establish exactly what this award was.

References

1. Bookshelf, ABC Arts Kate Evans for RN's The (30 July 2019). "Miles Franklin awarded to Indigenous author for 'novel of celebratory defiance'". ABC News. Retrieved 1 August 2019.
2. "Melissa Lucashenko Biography". University of Queensland Press.
3. "Q & A 1 – Melissa Lucashenko". Retrieved 22 November 2024.
4. "Melissa Lucashenko". Griffith Review. Archived from the original on 23 October 2009. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
5. ^ "Home". Melissa Lucashenko. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
6. ^ "Too much lip". Stella. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
7. "Home". Sisters Inside. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
8. ^ Lucashenko, Melissa (15 June 2017). "Q&A". Melissa-Lucashenko.com. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
9. "Celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Writing: Interview with Melissa Lucashenko". Australian Women Writers Challenge Blog. 25 July 2016. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
10. "Killing Darcy". AustLit. 27 October 2023. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
11. "The Locus Index to SF Awards: 1999 Aurealis Awards". Locus Online. Archived from the original on 24 April 2010. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
12. "The Locus Index to SF Awards: 1999 James Tiptree Jr Memorial Award". Locus Online. Archived from the original on 14 January 2010. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
13. "First things first". Griffith Review (60). 2018. Retrieved 9 March 2019. Includes an extract from Too Much Lip.
14. Convery, Stephanie (30 July 2019). "Miles Franklin 2019 winner Melissa Lucashenko: 'We need a revolution'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
15. "The 2019 Stella Prize". Stella. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
16. Nelson, Camilla (8 April 2019). "Stella prize 2019: your guide to the shortlist". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 April 2019. Co-published with The Conversation
17. Nelson, Camilla (8 April 2019). "Six books that shock, delve deeply and destroy pieties: your guide to the 2019 Stella Prize shortlist". The Converstation. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
18. Qian, Jinghua (11 February 2020). "Adapting Too Much Lip for screen". ArtsHub Australia. Retrieved 28 February 2020.
19. ^ "Queensland Literary Awards 2024 winners announced". Books+Publishing. 6 September 2024. Retrieved 6 September 2024.
20. ^ Heath, Nicola (1 February 2024). "Debut poet takes home $125,000 in prize money for a verse novel that almost wasn't published". ABC News. Retrieved 2 February 2024.
21. "2024 ARA HISTORICAL NOVEL PRIZE WINNERS ANNOUNCED | HNSA". hnsa.org.au. Retrieved 21 December 2024.
22. Watts, Madeleine (July 2013). Interview with Melissa Lucashenko. ISBN 9781922079985. Retrieved 10 March 2019. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
23. "The Moth Radio Hour: My Grandmother's Country". The Moth. Retrieved 26 March 2014.
24. ^ "Too Much Lip". Australian Government Department of Communications and the Arts. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
25. "1999 Aurealis Awards". The LOCUS index to SF awards. Archived from the original on 24 April 2010.
26. "1998 Long List". Otherwise Award. 12 March 2010. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
27. "Walkley Winners Archive". The Walkley Foundation. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
28. ^ "Melissa Lucashenko". Griffith Review.
29. "Kibble and Dobbie awards 2014 winners announced". Books+Publishing. 23 July 2014. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
30. "Congratulations to Melissa Lucashenko: Victorian Premier's Literary Awards". Griffith Review. 4 September 2014. Retrieved 10 March 2019.
31. "2019 ABIA Longlist announced". The Booktopian. 7 March 2019. Retrieved 10 March 2019.
32. Convery, Stephanie (30 July 2019). "Miles Franklin 2019 winner Melissa Lucashenko: 'We need a revolution'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
33. "2019 Queensland Literary Awards Winners and Finalists". State Library of Queensland. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
34. "2019 Queensland Literary Awards Winners and Finalists". State Library of Queensland. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
35. "The 2019 Stella Prize". Stella Prize. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
36. "Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2019 shortlists announced". Books+Publishing. 12 December 2018. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
37. Perkins, Cathy (Summer 2019). "Excellence in Literature an History". SL Magazine. 12 (4): 52–55.
38. "Too Much Lip". International Dublin Literary Award. 9 November 2019. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
39. ABIA (9 May 2024). "Australian Book Industry Award Winners 2024". ABIA. Retrieved 10 May 2024.
40. {"2024 ARA HISTORICAL NOVEL PRIZE WINNERS ANNOUNCED | HNSA". hnsa.org.au. Retrieved 21 December 2024.
41. "Barbara Jefferis Award 2024 Shortlist Announced". Whispering Gums. 18 September 2024. Retrieved 18 September 2024.
42. "Winners announced for the Indie Book Awards 2024". Indie Book Awards. 24 March 2024. Retrieved 1 August 2024.
43. {"2024 Long and Short Lists | JCU". jcu.edu.au.
44. "Miles Franklin 2024 longlist announced". Books+Publishing. 16 May 2024. Retrieved 17 May 2024.
45. "Lucashenko wins 2024 Nib Literary Award". Books+Publishing. 28 November 2024. Retrieved 28 November 2024.
46. "Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2024 shortlists announced". Books+Publishing. 15 August 2024. Retrieved 15 August 2024.
47. "Queensland Literary Awards 2024 shortlist announced". Books+Publishing. 2 August 2024. Retrieved 2 August 2024.
48. "Stella Prize 2024 longlist announced". Books+Publishing. 4 March 2024. Retrieved 5 March 2024.

Further reading

• Nathanael O'Reilly 'Exploring Indigenous Identity in Suburbia: Melissa Lucashenko's Steam Pigs ' JASAL 10 (2010)
• "Melissa Lucashenko (author profile and list of essays)". Griffith Review.

External links

• Official site

• 1967 births
• Living people
• 20th-century Australian novelists
• 21st-century Australian novelists
• Australian women novelists
• 20th-century Australian women writers
• 21st-century Australian women writers
• 20th-century Australian essayists
• 21st-century essayists
• Indigenous Australian writers
• Miles Franklin Award winners
• Writers from Brisbane
• Bundjalung people
• Australian people of Ukrainian descent