Gail Jones is an Australian novelist and academic.
Early life and career Gail Jones was born in Harvey, Western Australia. She grew up in Broome and Kalgoorlie. She studied fine arts briefly at the University of Melbourne before returning to Western Australia where she took her undergraduate degree and PhD from the University of Western Australia in 1994. Her thesis was titled Mimesis and alterity: postcolonialism, ethnography and the representation of racial 'others'. She is currently Professor of Writing in the Writing and Society Research School at the Western Sydney University.
Jones has also contributed content for an art exhibition, The floating world by Jo Darbyshire (2009).
Since 2017 Jones has been involved in a research project Other Worlds: Forms of 'World Literature', for which she is leading a theme titled 'Form as Encounter' that is exploring intercultural intersections and encounters.
Personal life Jones has a daughter, Kyra Giorgi, who is also a writer.
Awards Jones was presented with the Lifetime Achievement in Literature Award by Creative Australia in 2024.
The House of Breathing T. A.G. Hungerford Award for an unpublished work of Fiction by a Western Australian Writer, 1991 Barbara Ramsden Award Book of the Year, 1992 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards Steele Rudd Award, 1993 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Fiction winner 1993
Fetish Lives Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Fiction joint-winner and Premier's Prize joint-winner 1997
Black Mirror Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Fiction winner 2002 Shortlisted The Age Book of the Year Award 2003 Shortlisted The Courier-Mail Book of the Year 2003 Longlist International Dublin Literary Award 2003 Nita Kibble Literary Award, 2003
Sixty Lights Longlist Booker Prize 2004 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Fiction winner 2004 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Overall Prize 2004 The Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction, winner, 2005 ALS Gold Medal, 2005 Shortlist Commonwealth Writers Award Pacific Region 2005 Shortlist Miles Franklin Award 2005 Shortlist New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards for Fiction 2005 Shortlist Victorian Premier's Literary Awards for Fiction 2005 Longlist International Dublin Literary Award 2006 South Australian Premier's Awards, winner, 2006
Dreams of Speaking Longlisted for Orange Prize, 2006 Shortlisted for Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, Premier's Prize, 2006 Shortlisted for The Courier-Mail Book of the Year 2007 Shortlisted for Miles Franklin Award, 2007 Shortlisted for NSW Premier's Literary Award 2007 Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, 2008
Sorry Shortlisted for Miles Franklin Award, 2008 Shortlisted for Nita Kibble Literary Award 2008 Longlisted for Orange Prize, 2008 Shortlisted for Prime Minister's Literary Awards, 2008 Shortlisted for Prix Femina Etranger (France) 2008 Shortlisted for SA Premiers Fiction Prize 2008 Shortlisted for Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2008
Five Bells Longlisted for Miles Franklin Award, 2012 Nita Kibble Literary Award, winner, 2012 NSW Premier's Literary Awards People's Choice Award, winner, 2012
A Guide to Berlin Colin Roderick Award, Winner, 2015 Shortlisted for NSW Premier's Literary Awards, 2015 Shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize, 2016 Longlisted for the Stella Prize, 2016
The Death of Noah Glass Longlisted for the ALS Gold Medal, 2019 Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, 2019 Prime Minister's Literary Awards, Fiction winner, 2019 Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction, 2019 Shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize, 2019 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, 2020, Fiction Award Our Shadows
Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, 2021 Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction, 2021 Shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize, 2021 Salonika Burning
ARA Historical Novel Prize for Adult, winner, 2023 Shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award, 2024 One Another Shortlisted for Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, 2025 Shortlisted for the Colin Roderick Award, 2025 Longlisted for Voss Literary Prize, 2025
Published works Novels Black Mirror (2002) Sixty Lights (2004) Dreams of Speaking (2006) Sorry (2007) Five Bells (2011) A Guide to Berlin (2015) The Death of Noah Glass (2018) Our Shadows (2020) Salonika Burning (2022) One Another (2024) The Name of the Sister (2025)
Short story collections The House of Breathing (1992) Fetish Lives (1997)
Critical works Dorothy Green Memorial Lecture Gail Jones, 'A Dreaming, a Sauntering: re-imagining critical paradigms' JASAL 5 (2006) The Piano (Australian Screen Classics), Currency Press (2007)
These works have been widely translated. The languages include Italian, German, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, Mandarin, Polish, Croatian and Czech.
References
External links Gail Jones at Random House Australia Knowledge (A machine-readable transcription) (1992) University of Western Australia Library, File ID: jones001 Perth International Arts Festival 50 State Library of Western Australia (Retrieved 11 August 2007) Lyn Jacobs 'Gail Jones' "light writing": Memory and the Photo-graph' JASAL 5 (2006) Paul Genoni 'Art is the Windowpane' : Novels of Australian Women and Modernism in Inter-war Europe' JASAL 3 (2004) Tanya Dalziell 'An Ethics of Mourning: Gail Jones's Black Mirror ' JASAL 4 (2005) Robert Dixon 'Ghosts in the Machine: Modernity and the Unmodern in Gail Jones's Dreams of Speaking ' JASAL 8 (2008)