The Estate of Meme McDonald

Meme McDonald is a graduate of Victoria College of the Arts Drama School. She began her career as a theatre and festival director, specialising in the creation of large-scale outdoor performance events. Since then she has worked as a writing, photography and, most recently, a film projects.

Meme has written a number of award-winning books with the Aboriginal performer Boori Pryor. My Girragundji won the CBC Book of the Year Award for Younger Readers. The Binna Binna Man won three major awards at the 2000 NSW Premier’s Awards, including Book of the Year – a prize which had never before been awarded to a children’s book. Njunjul the Sun, the final book in this trio, which is based on true stories from Boori’s life and illustrated by Meme’s photographs, won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Younger Readers in November 2002.

A book for young readers, The Way of the Birds was adapted for television as an animation in 2000. Put Your Whole Self In won the N.S.W. State Literary Award for non-fiction in the 1993 and the Braille and Talking Book Award in the same year. An exhibition of photographs from the book was shown at four separate venues on the eastern coast.

Her latest novel, Love Like Water, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2007.

Meme lives in Melbourne.