Kalinda Ashton


Kalinda Ashton is an Australian writer and academic based in Melbourne, Victoria. She has a doctorate from RMIT University and is the author of the 2009 novel, The Danger Game, which has been praised by notable Australian authors such as Christos Tsiolkas and Amanda Lohrey. The novel was published in the UK in 2011. The Danger Game was joint winner of the Sydney Morning Herald best young novelist award and, in 2012, a Betty Trask award in the UK. She has been called a "post-Grunge lit" author, due to the perceived of influence of grunge lit author Christos Tsiolkas on her work.

Career

Ashton appeared as a guest at the 2013 Adelaide Writers Week. Ashton was a member of the Trotskyist organisation, Socialist Alternative, and is now an associate editor of the literary journal, Overland.
She has taught literature and creative writing at various universities in Australia including RMIT and Flinders University. Ashton is a long-standing social justice activist and a vegetarian. Her short stories have been published in Meanjin, Overland, Sleepers Almanac, Kill Your Darlings and other journals and anthologies.

Awards, nominations and grants

The Danger Game was long listed for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2010, joint winner of the Sydney Morning Herald best young novelist award.
In 2010 Ashton received an Australia Council Literature Board Grant for Developing Writers.
In 2011, the novel won a Betty Trask Award.