Kim Scott, the first indigenous author to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award, has won the accolade for a second time.
The West Australian author's novel, That Deadman Dance, was announced 2011 winner of the $50,000 prize at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne last night.
Also short-listed were multi-award-winning Braidwood author Roger McDonald's When Colts Ran and Melbourne-born author Chris Womersley's Bereft. Bereft was chosen by most of our Pageturners Book Group to be the winner.
Scott, 54, previously won the award in 2000 for his novel Benang, jointly with Thea Astley's Drylands.
That Deadman Dance tells the story of early contact of British colonisers, American whalers and the indigenous Noongar people on the south coast of Western Australia, the ''friendly frontier'', in the early 19th century.
Speaking for the judging panel, Morag Fraser said it was the ''largeness and the originality of the vision'' of Scott's novel that swayed the judges.
''As a literary achievement, it's breathtaking … it's clear-eyed about tragedy but it brims with what's possible.''