Alexis Wright is an award-winning indigenous Australian author from the Waanji people of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria highlands. Her acclaimed first novel, Plains of Promise, was published in 1997 and was short listed in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, The Age Book of the Year, and the NSW Premier's Awards. The novel has been translated into French. In 2006 Wright’s novel, Carpentaria, won several awards including the Miles Franklin Award and the Queensland premier’s Literary Award. She has also published two non-fiction works; Take Power (1998), an anthology of the story of the land rights movement and Grog War (1997) about the introduction of alcohol restrictions in Tennant Creek. Ms Wright has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding advisory body.