Bruce Pascoe facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Bruce Pascoe
Pascoe c. 2022
Born	1947 (age 77–78) Richmond, Victoria, Australia
Occupation	Writer
Alma mater	University of Melbourne (BEd)
Genre	Australian fiction, poetry
Subject	Australian Indigenous history
Notable works	Fog a Dox (2012) Dark Emu (2014)
Notable awards	List of awards Fellowship of Australian Writers Literature Award (1999) Prime Minister's Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction (2013) The Deadlys Published book of the year (2013) New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for Book of the Year (2016) New South Wales Premier's Indigenous Writers' Prize (2016) Dreamtime Person of the Year (2018) Australia Council for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award (2018)
Spouse	? (?–1982) Lyn Harwood (1982– )
Children	2

Bruce Pascoe (born in 1947) is an Australian writer. He writes many kinds of books, including stories, non-fiction (true stories), poems, and books for children. Sometimes he uses other names, called pen names, like Murray Gray and Leopold Glass. Bruce Pascoe identifies as an Aboriginal person. Since August 2020, he has been a special professor at the University of Melbourne. He teaches about Indigenous (Aboriginal) farming methods.

Pascoe is most famous for his book Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? (published in 2014). In this book, he suggests that traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were not just hunter-gatherers. He argues they also practiced farming, engineering, and built permanent homes. He believes their old ways could help Australia with sustainable development in the future.

Bruce Pascoe's Early Life and School

Bruce Pascoe was born in Richmond, Victoria in 1947. He grew up in a family that didn't have a lot of money. His dad, Alf, was a carpenter. His mom, Gloria Pascoe, later won a gold medal in lawn bowls at the 1980 Arnhem Paralympics.

Bruce spent his first few years on King Island. His dad worked at a mine there. When Bruce was 10, his family moved to Mornington, Victoria. Two years later, they moved to Fawkner, a suburb of Melbourne.

He went to a local public school. Then he finished high school at University High School. His sister had won a scholarship to go there. Bruce then went to the University of Melbourne. He first studied business but then changed to teaching. After getting his teaching degree, he taught in a small town near Shepparton. He also taught in Bairnsdale for nine years.

Bruce Pascoe's Career as a Writer

While taking a break from teaching, Bruce Pascoe bought a 300-hectare (740-acre) farm. He also sometimes worked as an abalone fisherman. In his free time, he started writing short stories, poems, and articles for newspapers.

In 1982, he moved back to Melbourne. He wanted to publish a magazine of short stories. When he couldn't find a publisher, he decided to start his own company. He raised money with his friend Lorraine Phelan. He ran Pascoe Publishing and Seaglass Books with his wife, Lyn Harwood.

From 1982 to 1998, Pascoe edited and published a magazine called Australian Short Stories. This magazine came out every three months. It featured all kinds of short stories by both new and famous writers. The first issue almost sold all 20,000 copies.

His 1988 novel Fox is about a person looking for their Aboriginal identity and home. The book talks about important issues like land rights for Aboriginal people. It also shows how Aboriginal traditions can mix with modern life.

Convincing Ground: Learning to Fall in Love with Your Country (2007) is another of his books. Its title comes from the Convincing Ground massacre. The book looks at old documents and stories about events in Australian history. It connects them to ongoing discussions about identity and memory. The publisher describes it as a book for all Australians. It helps people understand Australia's Indigenous past in a respectful way.

Pascoe was also in a TV show called First Australians in 2008. He has worked a lot on saving the Wathaurong language. He even created a dictionary for the language.

His book for young adults, Fog a Dox, won the Prime Minister's Literary Awards in 2013. It was also nominated for other awards. The judges for the Prime Minister's Award said that the story included Indigenous cultural knowledge.

Dark Emu (2014)

Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? was first published in 2014. This book challenges the idea that Aboriginal peoples in Australia before European settlement were only hunter-gatherers. Pascoe says that he found evidence in old settler accounts and other sources. This evidence suggests that traditional Aboriginal societies had farming, aquaculture (water farming), engineering, and villages with permanent houses.

The book won Book of the Year at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Many people praised it for making past research on Aboriginal economies popular. The book also caused some discussion. A positive review in an online magazine led to a debate about how Pascoe used his historical sources.

A second edition, called Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture, came out in 2018. A version for younger readers, Young Dark Emu: A Truer History, was published in 2019. The 2019 version was nominated for an award in children's literature in 2020.

The success of Dark Emu led to another book called Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?. This book, by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe, argues that Pascoe chose certain sources and misunderstood some evidence. They believe his conclusions give a misleading view of Aboriginal societies.

In October 2019, it was announced that a documentary film of Dark Emu would be made for television. Bruce Pascoe helped write the film.

Later Work and Other Roles

In September 2015, Bruce Pascoe was part of a special event in New York. He was one of six members of the First Nations Australia Writers Network who read their work.

In September 2020, Pascoe became a special professor at the University of Melbourne. His role is to help people learn about Indigenous agriculture. He also helps with research in this area.

Pascoe is a volunteer with the Country Fire Authority. He helped fight the bushfires in 2019–2020 near Mallacoota. In January 2020, he went to New South Wales to help there. He then returned to Mallacoota. He cancelled some events to stay in East Gippsland. He wanted to check the damage to his property and help his community recover from the fires.

Bruce Pascoe's Aboriginal Identity

Bruce Pascoe says that in his early thirties, he found Aboriginal ancestors on both sides of his family. These ancestors included people from Tasmania (Palawa), the Bunurong people of Victoria, and the Yuin people of southern New South Wales. By the age of 40, he identified himself as Koori.

He knows he also has Cornish and European ancestors. But he says he feels Aboriginal. He wrote, "It doesn’t matter about the colour of your skin, it's about how deeply embedded you are in the culture. It's the pulse of my life." He said his family denied their Aboriginal background for a long time. He only learned about it when he looked into the "missing parts" of his family's story. This led him to Aboriginal society and culture.

In his book Convincing Ground (2007), Pascoe wrote about people like him who find out about their distant Aboriginal heritage. He said that those who grew up without knowing their Aboriginality cannot have experienced racism or other difficulties. He believes they cannot "fully understand what it is to be Aboriginal." He also mentioned that some family records have often been "pruned of a few branches." In this book and in interviews, Pascoe admits his Aboriginal ancestry is distant. He has said he is "more Cornish than Koori."

In January 2020, Pascoe said that claims he is not Aboriginal are meant to discredit his book Dark Emu. He had already explained his connection was through his Tasmanian family, not through the Central Victorian Bunurong.

Awards and Recognition

Bruce Pascoe has received many awards for his writing:

• 1999: Fellowship of Australian Writers – Australian Literature Award for Shark.
• 2013: Prime Minister's Literary Award – Young Adult Fiction.
• 2013: Deadly Awards – Published book of the year.
• 2016: NSW Premier's Literary Award for Dark Emu.
• 2016: New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards – Indigenous Writers' Prize.
• 2018: Australia Council for the Arts – Lifetime Achievement Award.
• 2020: Children's Book of the Year Award, Eve Pownall Award for Information Books for Young Dark Emu.
• 2021: Australian Society of Authors – ASA Medal.

Pascoe was nominated as Person of the Year at the National Dreamtime Awards 2018. He was also invited to a special cultural ceremony by Yuin elder Max Dulumunmum Harrison. In the same year, he gave a speech called "Mother Earth" for the Eric Rolls Memorial Lecture.

Bruce Pascoe's Personal Life

In 1982, Bruce Pascoe separated from his first wife. They have a daughter together. In the same year, he married Lyn Harwood. They have a son. In 2017, Pascoe and Harwood separated. Pascoe said this was because he was away a lot, working on his farming mission.

Pascoe lives on a 60-hectare (150-acre) farm called Yumburra. It is near Mallacoota in East Gippsland, on the eastern coast of Victoria. He also works for his family company, Black Duck Foods. This company aims to grow Indigenous produce, like the foods mentioned in Dark Emu, to sell. His 2024 book is called Black Duck – A Year at Yumburra.

Bruce Pascoe's Books

Here is a selection of books written by Bruce Pascoe:

• A Corner Full of Characters, 1981
• Night Animals, 1986
• Fox, 1988
• Ruby-eyed Coucal, 1996
• Wathaurong : Too bloody strong : Stories and life journeys of people from Wathaurong, 1997
• Cape Otway: Coast of secrets, 1997
• Shark, 1999
• Nightjar, 2000
• Earth, 2001
• Ocean, 2002
• Foxies in a Firehose : A piece of doggerel from Warragul, 2006
• The Little Red Yellow Black Book : An introduction to indigenous Australia, 2008
• Fog a Dox, 2012
• Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture Or Accident?, 2014
• Seahorse, 2015
• Mrs Whitlam, 2016
• Young Dark Emu: A Truer History, 2019
• Salt: Selected Stories and Essays, 2019
• Black Duck – A Year at Yumburra, with Lyn Harwood, 2024

He has also written under the names Murray Gray (The Great Australian Novel: At Last it's Here, a funny novel from 1984) and Leopold Glass (Ribcage: All You Need Is $800,000 – Quickly, a detective novel from 1999).