Tony Birch is among Australia’s finest living writers. A poet, activist and academic, as well as an acclaimed novelist and short-story writer, Birch’s writing is concerned with Australians, especially Indigenous Australians, living life on the fringes. He writes, too, about the dark shadow cast by the state in the everyday lives of marginalised people.

In 2017, he became the first Aboriginal writer to win the Patrick White Award, in recognition of his invaluable body of work, including the novels Blood and Ghost River and the short-story collections, Common People and The Promise. His new book, The White Girl, is about the Stolen Generations, set in 1960s rural Australia. It’s the story of Odette, and her fair-skinned granddaughter, who she must protect from authorities at all costs.

At Montalto, he joins Michael Williams for a conversation about writing, research and the politics of prejudice – then and now.