47 Writers from New South Wales

Glenda Emilie Adams was an Australian novelist and short story writer, probably best known as the winner of the 1987 Miles Franklin Award for Dancing on Coral. She was a teacher of creative writing, and helped develop writing programs.

Thea Beatrice May Astley was an Australian novelist and short story writer. She was a prolific writer who was published for over 40 years from 1958. At the time of her death, she had won more Miles Franklin Awards, Australia's major literary award, than any other writer. As well as being a writer, she taught at all levels of education - primary, secondary and tertiary.

Caroline Louisa Waring Atkinson best known as Louisa Atkinson, was an early Australian writer, botanist and illustrator. While she was well known for her fiction during her lifetime, her long-term significance rests on her botanical work. She is regarded as a ground-breaker for Australian women in journalism and natural science, and is significant in her time for her sympathetic references to Aboriginal Australians in her writings and her encouragement of conservation.

Faith Bandler was an Australian civil rights activist of South Sea Islander and Scottish-Indian heritage. She was a campaigner for the rights of indigenous Australians and South Sea Islanders. Bandler was best known for her leadership in the campaign for the 1967 referendum on Aboriginal Australians.

Marjorie Faith Barnard was an Australian novelist and short story writer, critic, historian—and librarian. She went to school and university in Sydney, and then trained as a librarian. She was employed as a librarian for two periods in her life, but her main passion was writing.

Clive Stephen Barry was an Australian novelist and inaugural winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize, described by the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature as a "vivid stylist with a capacity for dry humour".

Barbara Janet Baynton was an Australian writer known primarily for her short stories about life in the bush. She published the collection Bush Studies (1902) and the novel Human Toll (1907), as well as writing for The Bulletin and The Sydney Morning Herald. She was a shrewd manager of her second husband's estate, owning properties in Melbourne and London. She acquired the title Lady Headley from her third marriage to Rowland Allanson-Winn, 5th Baron Headley, but never wrote under that name.

Gail Bell is an Australian author of short stories, two non-fiction books, travel writing, book reviews, critical essays and long form journalism. Her books and essays have won acclaim and prizes. She is represented by Selwa Anthony Author Management Pty Ltd.

Ellen Dymphna Cusack AM was an Australian author and playwright.

Josephine Blanche d'Alpuget is an Australian writer and the second wife of Bob Hawke, the longest-serving Labor Prime Minister of Australia.

Eleanor Dark AO was an Australian author whose novels included Prelude to Christopher (1934) and Return to Coolami (1936), both winners of the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for literature, and her best known work The Timeless Land (1941).

Luke Davies is an Australian writer of poetry, novels and screenplays. His best known works are Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction and the screenplay for the film Lion, which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Davies also co-wrote the screenplay for the film News of the World.

Rosemary de Brissac Dobson, AO was an Australian poet, who was also an illustrator, editor and anthologist. She published fourteen volumes of poetry, was published in almost every annual volume of Australian Poetry and has been translated into French and other languages.

Peter David Drysdale is an Australian economist and writer. He is an Emeritus Professor of Economics and Visiting Fellow in the Crawford School of Economics and Government in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Until 2002, he was Executive Director of the Australia-Japan Research Centre (AJRC).

James Francis Dwyer was an Australian writer. Born in Camden Park, New South Wales, Dwyer worked as a postal assistant until he was convicted in a scheme to make fraudulent postal orders and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1899. In prison, Dwyer began writing, and with the help of another inmate and a prison guard, had his work published in The Bulletin. After completing his sentence, he relocated to London and then New York, where he established a successful career as a writer of short stories and novels. Dwyer later moved to France, where he wrote his autobiography, Leg-Irons on Wings, in 1949. Dwyer wrote over 1,000 short stories during his career, and was the first Australian-born person to become a millionaire from writing.

Flora Sydney Patricia Eldershaw was an Australian novelist, critic and historian. With Marjorie Barnard she formed the writing collaboration known as M. Barnard Eldershaw. She was also a teacher and later a public servant.

David Manning Foster is an Australian novelist and scientist. He has written a range of satires on the theme of the decline of Western civilization, as well as producing short stories, poetry, essays, and a number of radio plays.

Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, known as Miles Franklin, was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, published by Blackwoods of Edinburgh in 1901. While she wrote throughout her life, her other major literary success, All That Swagger, was not published until 1936.

Jacqueline French is an Australian author who has written over 140 books and has won more than 60 national and international awards. She is considered one of Australia's most popular and awarded children's authors, writing across a number of children's genres including picture books, history, fantasy and history fiction.

Cecilia May Gibbs MBE was an Australian children's author, illustrator, and cartoonist. She is best known for her gumnut babies, and the book Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.

Lionel Arthur Gilbert was an Australian historian, author, curator, lecturer, and biographer, specializing in applied, natural, and local history. Born in Burwood, New South Wales, he studied at Sydney Teachers College and, beginning in 1946, worked as a teacher and later a headmaster in state schools in various locations around New South Wales until 1961. In 1963 Gilbert graduated from the University of New England with a Bachelor of Arts in History. That same year, he was appointed a lecturer and curator at the Armidale Teachers' College Museum of Education, in which capacity he served until his retirement in 1984, overseeing several expansions of the museum and establishment of a historical research centre.

Catherine Elizabeth Grenville is an Australian author. She has published fifteen books, including fiction, non-fiction, biography, and books about the writing process. In 2001, she won the Orange Prize for The Idea of Perfection, and in 2006 she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for The Secret River. The Secret River was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Alec Derwent Hope was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic. He was referred to in an American journal as "the 20th century's greatest 18th-century poet".

Ion Llewellyn Idriess, OBE was a prolific and influential Australian author. He wrote more than 50 books over 43 years between 1927 and 1969 – an average of one book every 10 months, and twice published three books in one year. His first book was Madman's Island, published in 1927 at the age of 38, and his last was written at the age of 79. Called Challenge of the North, it told of Idriess's ideas for developing the north of Australia.

William Kostakis is an Australian author and journalist. In high school, he won the Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer of the Year prize for a short story called 'Bing Me'. He went on to sign his first book deal in his final year of high school. His second novel, The First Third won the 2014 Inky Awards, and was shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year: Older Readers and Prime Minister's Literary Awards. His latest novel The Sidekicks was released in 2016, and has since been shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards.

Ruby Langford Ginibi was an acclaimed Bundjalung author, historian and lecturer on Aboriginal history, culture and politics.

Henry Archibald Hertzberg Lawson was an Australian writer and bush poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest short story writer".

Will Lawson, born in Durham, England, was a popular bush poet, novelist, journalist and historian of Australia.

Jessie Sinclair Litchfield was an Australian author and Northern Territory pioneer.

Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar, was an Australian poet and fiction writer. Her poem My Country is widely known in Australia, especially its second stanza, which begins: "I love a sunburnt country/A land of sweeping plains,/Of ragged mountain ranges,/Of droughts and flooding rains."

Colin Mackenzie is an Australian poet and songwriter.

Chris Mansell is an Australian poet and publisher.

Colleen Margaretta McCullough was an Australian author known for her novels, her most well-known being The Thorn Birds and The Ladies of Missalonghi.

Kirstyn McDermott is an Australian writer of speculative fiction.

Nan McDonald was an Australian poet and editor.

Ella May McFadyen was an Australian poet, journalist and children's writer. For 18 years she conducted "The Children's Page" for the Sydney Mail and was known as Cinderella.

D'Arcy Francis Niland was an Australian farm labourer, novelist and short story writer. In 1955 he wrote The Shiralee, which gained international recognition in its depictions of the experiences of a swagman and his four-year-old daughter. It was made into a 1957 film, starring Peter Finch, and a 1987 TV mini-series, starring Bryan Brown. Niland married fellow writer, Ruth Park (1917–2010), on 11 May 1942 and the couple had five children: Anne, Rory, Patrick and twin daughters, Kilmeny (1950–2009) and Deborah (1950–present). Niland died on 29 March 1967 of a myocardial infarction, aged 49.

Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood. Paterson's more notable poems include "Clancy of the Overflow" (1889), "The Man from Snowy River" (1890) and "Waltzing Matilda" (1895), regarded widely as Australia's unofficial national anthem.

Christine Piper is an Australian author and editor. Her first novel, After Darkness, won the 2014 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award. She won the 2014 Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay for "Unearthing the Past".

Daniel Reynaud is an Australian historian whose work on Australian war cinema and on Australian World War I soldiers and religion has challenged aspects of the Anzac legend, Australia’s most important national mythology built around the role of Australian servicemen, popularly known as Anzacs

Geoffrey Ronald Robertson is a human rights barrister, academic, author and broadcaster. He holds dual Australian and British citizenship.

Madeleine St John was an Australian writer, the first Australian woman to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.

The Sydney Writers Walk is a series of 60 circular metal plaques embedded in the footpath between Overseas Passenger Terminal on West Circular Quay and the Sydney Opera House forecourt on East Circular Quay.

Steve Toltz is an Australian novelist.

William Charles Wentworth was an Australian explorer, journalist, politician and author, and one of the leading figures of early colonial New South Wales. He was the first native-born Australian to achieve a reputation overseas, and a leading advocate for self-government for the Australian colonies.

Nadia Wheatley is an Australian writer whose work includes picture books, novels, biography and history. Perhaps best known for her classic picture book My Place, the author's biography of Charmian Clift was described by critic Peter Craven as 'one of the greatest Australian biographies'. Another great book by her is A Banner Bold, which is an historical novel.

Tara June Winch is an Australian writer. She is the 2020 winner of the Miles Franklin Award for her book, The Yield.