Debra Dank

WE COME WITH THIS PLACE AWARDS AND LISTINGS: Shortlisted for 2023 NSW Premier's Literary Awards Shortlisted for 2023 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-Fiction Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction Indigenous Writers' Prize UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing Shortlisted for three Queensland Literary Awards 2023 Longlisted for the 2023 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award Longlisted for the...

'Be careful what you wish for,' wrote Aesop, 'lest it come true.' Debra Dank had long been desperate to visit the National Archives, to paint a fuller picture of her family, to add flesh to the name-bones and the few precious stories she possessed. What she discovered would shatter everything she thought she knew about her family and her past....

You won't find terraglossia on Google, or in a dictionary. It's a word coined by acclaimed academic and award-winning author Dr Debra Dank in response to the first Europeans' description of Australia as 'terra nullius' – no one's land. These new arrivals, with their language born far away, silenced and made invisible the more-than-ancient civilisations that have lived in and...