Cassandra Jean Pybus (born 29 September 1947) is an Australian historian and writer. She is a former professorial fellow in history at the University of Sydney, and has published extensively on Australian and American history.
Pybus was born in Hobart, Tasmania and educated at North Sydney Girls High School and the University of Sydney.
Her mother, Betty Pybus, was a pioneer of women's health in Sydney and Tasmania.
From 1989 to 1994, Pybus was editor of the literary magazine ''Island magazine, Island''. She won the Colin Roderick Award in 1993 for ''Gross Moral Turpitude'', a re-examination of the case of Sydney Sparkes Orr, a Northern Irish academic who became embroiled in a scandal involving a relationship with a student whilst working at the University of Tasmania.
In 2000, she won an Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, Adelaide Festival Award for Literature for ''The Devil and James McAuley'', a biography of the poet James McAuley.
Pybus was awarded the Centenary Medal in 2001 for outstanding contribution to Tasmanian and Australian literature and education.
In 2020 she was shortlisted for the Nonfiction Book Award at the Queensland Literary Awards for ''Truganini'' and for the Nonfiction prize at the 2021 Indie Book Awards as well as the 2021 Biography book of the year at the Australian Book Industry Awards with ''Truganini''.' In August 2021 she won the National Biography Award with ''Truganini,'' while in November 2021 she was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Books
* ''Truganini: Journey Through the Apocalypse'' (2020)
* ''Enterprising Women: Gender Race and Power in the Revolutionary Atlantic'' (with Kit Candlin; 2015)
* ''Other Middle Passages'' (edited with Marcus Rediker and Emma Christopher; 2007)
* ''Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway slaves of the American Revolution and their global quest for liberty'' (2006)
* ''Black Founders: The unknown story of Australia's first black settlers'' (2006)
* ''The Woman who Walked to Russia: A writer's search for a lost legend'' (2004)
* ''American Citizens, British Slaves: Yankee political prisoners in an Australian penal colony, 1839–1850'' (with Hamish Maxwell-Stewart; 2002)
* ''Raven Road'' (2001)
* ''The Devil and James McAuley'' (1999)
* ''Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree'' (1998)
* ''White Rajah: A Dynastic Intrigue'' (1996)
* ''Gross Moral Turpitude: The Orr Case Reconsidered'' (1993)
* ''Community of Thieves'' (1991)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pybus, Cassandra
1947 births
Living people
Australian women historians
20th-century Australian historians
21st-century Australian historians
Academic staff of the University of Sydney
University of Sydney alumni
People educated at North Sydney Girls High School
Writers from Tasmania
People from Hobart
Recipients of the Centenary Medal
21st-century Australian women writers
20th-century Australian women writers
Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities