Boori Monty Pryor (born 1950) is an

Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands ...

author best known as a storyteller and as the inaugural

Australian Children's Laureate The Australian Children's Laureate is a role appointed to an Australian children's author and/or illustrator with the purpose of promoting the power of reading to children. It is a two-year role and was inaugurated in 2011, for the 2012–2013 pe ...

(20122013).

Early life and family

Pryor is descended from the Birri Gubba nation of the Bowen region and the Kunggandji people from Yarrabah, near

Cairns Cairns (, ) is a city in Queensland, Australia, on the tropical north east coast of Far North Queensland. The population in June 2019 was 153,952, having grown on average 1.02% annually over the preceding five years. The city is the 5th-most-p ...

. His father was Monty Prior.

Career

Pryor had a long career communicating

Aboriginal Australian culture Australian Aboriginal culture includes a number of practices and ceremonies centered on a belief in the Dreamtime and other mythology. Reverence and respect for the land and oral traditions are emphasised. Over 300 languages and other groupings ...

to schools in Australia, performing dances, playing didgeridoo, and storytelling, before turning to writing books. He has worked in film and television, sport, and music. In 1986, Boori had an acting role alongside his brother Paul Pryor in “Women of the Sun”. In his keynote address for the 2013 Come Out Festival in Adelaide, Pryor spoke about the importance of storytelling, performance, and dance in engaging children with literacy, literature, and Indigenous cultures. Pryor was an ambassador for the National Year of Reading (Australia) in 2012.

In film

In 2018, ABC iView released the web series, web/television series ''Wrong Kind of Black'', narrated by and based on Pryor’s life. In September 2019, the web series was nominated for an International Emmy. , a documentary film about Boori is being made, using crowdfunding.

Awards and honours

In 1990, Pryor received the NAIDOC Week, National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) Award as a result of his "outstanding contribution to the promotion of Indigenous culture". In 2011, ''Shake a Leg'' won the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Children’s Fiction. In 2012, Pryor and Alison Lester were named the first inaugural

s. Pryor's works, including those in collaboration with Meme McDonald, have also won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award. ''Maybe Tomorrow'' (1998) won a Special Commendation from the Human Rights Awards (Australia), Human Rights Awards and ''My Girragundji'' (1998), won a Children's Book Council of Australia Award, while ''The Binna Binna Man'' (1999), won several awards.

Selected works

Picture Books * ''Shake a Leg'', illustrated by Jan Ormerod (2010), winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Children's Fiction in 2011 *''Story Doctors'', illustrated by Rita Sinclair (2021) Young adult novels * ''My Girragundji'', co-authored with Meme McDonald (1998), winner of a Children's Book Council of Australia#Awards, Children's Book Council of Australia Award *''The Binna Binna Man'', co-authored with Meme McDonald (1999), won an Ethnic Affairs Commission Award in 2000 * ''Njunjul the Sun'', co-authored with Meme McDonald (2002) * ''Flytrap'', co-authored with Meme McDonald (2002) Non-fiction * ''Maybe Tomorrow'', co-authored with Meme McDonald (1998)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pryor, Boori Monty 1950 births Indigenous Australian writers Australian children's writers Living people Writers from Queensland 20th-century Australian novelists 21st-century Australian novelists