2011 in Australian literature

Events

Four authors are named in the Queen's Birthday Honours: Peter FitzSimons, Susanne Gervay, Roland Perry, and Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Thomas Keneally donates his personal library to the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts

Australian libraries and library associations join together to make 2012 the National Year of Reading

Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) declares Saturday, 20 August 2011, the inaugural National Bookshop Day

Final issue of the "Australian Literary Review" to be published in October 2011

Hannie Rayson is the first Australian to be awarded a commission with New York’s Manhattan Theatre Club

Friends and family of biographer Hazel Rowley establish funds to commemorate Rowley’s life and her writing legacy via the Hazel Rowley Literary Fund

Alison Lester and Boori Monty Pryor are appointed to be Australia’s first Children’s Laureates

The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) appoints Robert Adamson to hold the inaugural CAL Chair in Australian Poetry

Literary fiction

Tony Birch – Blood

Geraldine Brooks – Caleb's Crossing

Annah Faulkner – The Beloved

Anna Funder – All That I Am

Kate Grenville – Sarah Thornhill

Gail Jones – Five Bells

Gillian Mears – Foal's Bread

Alex Miller – Autumn Laing

Frank Moorhouse – Cold Light

Favel Parrett – Past The Shallows

Elliot Perlman – The Street Sweeper

Craig Sherborne – The Amateur Science of Love

Rohan Wilson – The Roving Party

Charlotte Wood – Animal People

Children's and Young Adult fiction

Alexandra Adornetto – Hades

Em Bailey – Shift

J. C. Burke – Pig Boy

Isobelle Carmody – The Sending

Ursula Dubosarsky – The Golden Day

Scott Gardner – The Dead I Know

Steven Herrick – Black Painted Fingernails

Andrew McGahan – The Coming of the Whirlpool

Melina Marchetta – Froi of the Exiles

Vikki Wakefield – All I Ever Wanted

Scott Westerfeld – Goliath

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Max Barry – Machine Man

Trudi Canavan – The Rogue

Peter Docker – The Water Boys

Greg Egan – The Clockwork Rocket

Will Elliott – Shadow

Kim Falconer – Road to the Soul

Pamela Freeman – Ember and Ash

Richard Harland – Liberator

Glenda Larke – Stormlord's Exile

Kim Westwood – The Courier's New Bicycle

Crime and Mystery

Alan Carter – Prime Cut

Peter Corris – Follow the Money

Garry Disher – Whispering Death

Kerry Greenwood – Cooking the Books

Stuart Littlemore – Harry Curry: Counsel of Choice

Barry Maitland – Chelsea Mansion

Kel Robertson – Rip Off

Michael Robotham – The Wreckage

Poetry

Ali Alizadeh – Ashes in the Air

Joanne Burns – Amphora

Barry Hill – Lines for Birds: Poems and Paintings

John Kinsella – Armour

Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray – Australian Poetry Since 1788 (edited)

Jaya Savige – Surface to Air

Biography

Julian Assange – Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography

A. J. Brown – Michael Kirby: Paradoxes and Principles

Eileen Chanin – Book Life: The Life and Times of David Scott Mitchell 1836–1907

Raimond Gaita – After Romulus

Mark McKenna – An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark

Susan Mitchell – Tony Abbott: A Man's Man

Christine Nixon – Fair Cop

Sue Pieters-Hawke – Hazel: My Mother's Story

Alice Pung – Her Father's Daughter

David Robert Walker – Not Dark Yet: A Personal History

Sarah Watt, William McInnes – Worse Things Happen at Sea

Deaths

1 March – Hazel Rowley, author (born 1951)

20 June – T. A. G. Hungerford, author (born 1915)

2 September – Bernard Smith, poet (born 1916)

27 September – Sara Douglass, author (born 1957)

4 October – Di Gribble, editor and publisher (born 1942)

8 December – Zelman Cowen, jurist (born 1919)