Debra Dank

Debra Dank is an Australian writer who won an unprecedented four prizes at the 2023 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

Dank is a Gudanji woman who completed a Master of Education and graduated with a PhD in narrative theory and semiotics at Deakin University in 2021.

Dank adapted her award-winning book, We Come With this Place, from work towards her PhD thesis. She was encouraged by her supervisor to shape the book without chapters to allow what she described as "nonlinear storying as it exists in my community".

At the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Dank won an unprecedented four awards, the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, the Indigenous Writers' prize and capped it off by winning the overall Book of the Year. She also won the ALS Gold Medal in 2023.

Dank's book was included on the 2022 Prime Minister's Summer Reading List, compiled by the Grattan Institute. In 2023 it was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. At the Queensland Literary Awards it won the Nonfiction Book Award and was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance and the People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award. It was also shortlisted for the Nonfiction Award at the 2023 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

An extract from We Come With This Place was included in a 2023 NSW Higher School Certificate examination.

, Dank is a lecturer in Indigenous studies at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

Works

 * Ridimbat Langa Ola Biginnini = Reading with Children, parallel text, dual-language book in Kriol and English, Indigenous Literacy Foundation, 2011
 * We Come With This Place, Echo Publishing, 2022