Faith Bandler   Welour, My Brother (Wild & Wooley Aus o/p). A novel by a well-known black activist describing a boy's early life in Queensland, and the tensions of a racially mixed community.

 

John Muk Muk Burke   Bridge of Triangles (University of Queensland Press Aus). Powerful, landscape-driven images in this tale of a mixed-race child growing up unable to associate with either side of his heritage, but refusing to accept the downward spiral into despair and alcoholism adopted by those around him.

Evelyn Crawford   Over My Tracks (Penguin Aus). Told to Chris Walsh, this oral autobiography is the story of a formidable woman, from her 1930s childhood among the red sandhills of Yantabulla, through her Outback struggles as a mother of fourteen children, to her tireless work, late in life, with Aboriginal students, combating prejudice with education.

Nene Gare   The Fringe Dwellers (Sun Aus o/p). A story of an Aboriginal family on the edge of town and society.

Ruby Langford   Don't Take Your Love to Town (Penguin Aus). An autobiography demonstrating a black woman's courage and humour in the face of tragedy and poverty lived out in northern New South Wales and the inner city of Sydney.

Sally Morgan   My Place (Virago UK; Little Brown US; Fremantle Arts Centre Press Aus). A widely acclaimed and best-selling account of a Western Australian woman's discovery of her black roots.

David Mowaljarlai and Jutta Malnic   Yorro Yorro (Magabala Books Aus). Starry-eyed photographer Malnic's musings while recording sacred Wandjina sites in the west Kimberley and, more interestingly, Mowaljarlai's account of his upbringing and Ngarinyin tribal lore.

Mudrooroo   Wildcat Falling (Angus & Robertson Aus). The first novel by an Aboriginal writer to be published (in 1965), this is the story of a black teenage delinquent coming of age in the 1950s . Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World (Hyland House Aus) details the attempted annihilation of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Mudrooroo's three latest novels - The Kwinkan (1995), The Undying (1998) and Underground (1999) - are part of his magic-realist Master of Ghost Dreaming series.

Oodgeroo Noonuccal   My People (Jacaranda Wiley Aus). A collection of verse by an established campaigning poet (previously known as Kath Walker).

Paddy Roe   Gularabulu (Fremantle Arts Centre Press Aus). Stories from the west Kimberley, both traditional myths and tales of a much more recent origin.

Kim Scott   Benang (FACP Aus). Infuriated at reading the words of A.O. Neville, Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia in the 1930s, who planned to "breed out" Aborigines from Australia, author Scott wrote this powerful tale of Nyoongar history using Neville's own themes to overturn his elitist arguments.

Sam Watson   The Kadaitcha Song (Viking Penguin US o/p; Penguin Aus). A brutal, fast-paced thriller; a modern parable of warring good and evil, mixed with ancient sorcery.

Archie Weller   The Day of the Dog (Allen & Unwin Aus). Weller's violent first novel came out in an angry burst after being released, at 23, from incarceration in Broome jail. The protagonist, in a similiar situation, is pressured back into a criminal world by his Aboriginal peers and by police harassment. Searing pace and forceful writing. His second novel, Land of the Golden Clouds (Allen & Unwin Aus), is an epic science fiction fantasy, set 3000 years in the future, which portrays an Australia devastated by a nuclear holocaust and populated by warring tribes.