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 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 appoints Robert Adamson to hold the inaugural CAL Chair in Australian Poetry

  Major publications

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
• 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

  Awards and honours

Lifetime achievement

Fiction

International

National

Children and Young Adult

National

Crime and Mystery

National

Science Fiction

Non-Fiction

Poetry

Drama

Deaths

• 1 March – Hazel Rowley, author
• 19 June – T. A. G. Hungerford, author
• 2 September – Bernard Smith, art historian
• 27 September – Sara Douglass, author
• 4 October – Di Gribble, editor and publisher
• 8 December – Zelman Cowen, jurist