“So long as you are still writing, you believe that something may simply appear that you are not expecting, could not have predicted, and could not know you had in you.”
Creative Australia and Writing Australia join the arts sector and readers alike in mourning the passing of David Malouf AO, one of Australia’s most significant and widely admired writers.
David Malouf’s work traversed fiction, poetry, essays, memoir and opera libretti, distinguished by its lyrical precision and morality. His novels include Johnno, An Imaginary Life, The Great World, Remembering Babylon, Conversations at Curlow Creek and Ransom, works that explore identity, displacement, memory and belonging across landscapes that ranged from suburban Brisbane to the ancient classical world. Several of these books achieved major national and international recognition, with The Great World awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and Remembering Babylon winning the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Together with his poetry collections, short stories and essays, Malouf’s writing has been read and taught across generations and translated and published widely overseas.
Creative Australia (formerly the Australia Council for the Arts) engaged David Malouf at formative stages of his career through creative writing grants, publishing subsidies and travel support at a time when Australian literature was gaining confidence and international attention. He served as a member of the Literature Board in the 1970s and in 2016, he was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, recognising the depth, consistency and influence of his contribution.
Beyond his writing, David Malouf was a generous advocate for Australian culture and a mentor for new writers. He articulated, with clarity and conviction, the value of the arts to civic life and national identity and was influential in strengthening the place of artists within public policy and cultural institutions. In 1999 he wrote in support of a major review of Australia's performing arts:
"(Art) changes our sense of ourselves and of the world. It changes the quality of our lives and the quality of what we do and make. It is one of the clearest forms of our local identity. By bringing us into contact with high achievement (the arts) make us eager for achievements of our own. We come away from them with a quickened interest in things, a deeper awareness of our own possibility and power. And all this we carry back into daily living and into the work we do."
Wenona Byrne, Director Writing Australia said:
“David Malouf was a writer of rare grace and authority. His work expanded how Australians see themselves and how we are seen by the world. He brought depth, humanity and intellectual courage to everything he wrote, and his legacy will continue to inspire readers and writers for generations.”
Professor Sarah Holland-Batt, Writing Australia Council said:
“David Malouf is a lodestar to generations of Australian poets and writers inspired by the genius of his imagination. Across his immense and dazzling oeuvre—spanning poetry, fiction, memoir, essays, libretti and more—he offered up fresh ways of reimagining Australia and its place in the world. At the same time, he was relentlessly cosmopolitan, reaching across time and space to engage profoundly with the classics, history, art, music, and philosophy. Beyond his peerless erudition and brilliance, he was also deeply beloved for his warmth, grace, humanity, and his extraordinary generosity to younger writers in whose works he retained a keen and abiding interest. His writing has enriched and expanded our literature and culture beyond measure, and through his gifts, we have better understood and imagined our own lives.”
Creative Australia extends its sincere condolences to David Malouf’s family, friends and the many readers and colleagues who mourn his passing. We honour and celebrate a life devoted to the enduring power of words.
David Malouf AO
1934–2026
Featured image: David Malouf AO, photo by Conrad Del Villar.
