'I thought I would begin this talk about the power and purpose of literature by talking about my 1998 book Take Power. The title came from a Gurindji Elder while telling the story of the ten-year battle his people fought against Vestey’s, a British pastoral company that owned the Wave Hill pastoral property in the north-west of the Northern Territory, when in 1966, 200 Gurindji, the traditional landowners, walked off the cattle station where they worked on their stolen lands because of the harsh treatment they were receiving from the management of the pastoral property. Vincent Lingiari, who led his people off Wave Hill, said: ‘We can’t go back to that Vestey’s. Vestey’s been treating me like a walagu (dog). Make mefella worry.’ The Gurindji kept telling their story straight, and eventually they achieved land rights over part of their traditional lands.' (Introduction)

'In Tracker (winner of the 2018 Stella Prize), hundreds of stories are told to build up the portrait of an immensely complex and gifted man.' (Introduction)

'"How do you tell an impossible story, one that is almost too big to contain in a single book?"

'This is the opening line of Alexis Wright's book Tracker, which has won the 2018 Stella Prize for Australian women's writing.' (Introduction)

'Alexis Wright is a master storyteller. The power of her writing derives not only from her capacity to conjure words into spellbinding tales but from the troubled thinking she brings to bear on narrative forms themselves. Wright has an incisive grasp of storytelling as a primary vehicle of political power and its potential transformation. Who has the right to tell a story? This question, so simple on the face of it, simultaneously invokes the ethical basis of Aboriginal society as well as the settler-colonial hubris that legitimises dispossession and locates authority elsewhere.' (Introduction)

'Writing the story of her friend Tracker Tilmouth was not only a labour of love for Waanyi woman Alexis Wright, she also knew she had to honour Aboriginal ways of storytelling.' (Introduction)