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.

Career
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). 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.

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 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. 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, shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards University of Southern Queensland History Book Award, and longlisted for the CHASS Australia Book Prize.

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.

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."

Books

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.

References

External links

Official website

Category:1969 births
Category:American emigrants to Australia
Category:Australian historians
Category:Australian women historians
Category:La Trobe University faculty
Category:Living people
Category:Monash University alumni
Category:Recipients of grants/fellowships from the Australian Research Council (ARC)
Category:Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia
Category:University of Melbourne alumni
Category:Writers from Ann Arbor, Michigan
Category:Writers from Melbourne