Listening to Country by Ros Moriarty

Shortlisted for both The Age Book of the Year and the Australian Human Rights Commission Literature Award

'This big land, Australia. It's big enough for everyone!' calls Annie Karrakayn across the pre-dawn campfire to the other Law women stirring from the perfect quiet of a still, desert night. 'Strong Dreamin', she whispers.

So begins the intimate diary of Ros Moriarty, a white woman married to an Aboriginal man, as she takes an emotional journey across country and culture to the Northern Territory's Tanami Desert with Annie and the other matriarchs of her husband's Aboriginal family to perform ceremony.

Full of warmth and honesty, Listening to Country opens a rare and vivid window to the voices, humour and strength of these remarkable Law women of the remote Gulf of Carpentaria. It reveals the human relationships and philosophical insights which enable them to transcend the heartbreaking material poverty, illness and increasing violence of their community, to live with astonishing happiness and purpose.

Listening to Country is an uplifting tribute to them and a celebration of love, family and belonging.

Ros Moriarty, formerly a journalist with Radio Australia in Indigenous affairs, women's issues and the environment, has now spent most of her professional life as managaing director of Australia's leading Indigenous design studio, Balarinji, a business she established with her husband, John Moriarty, in 1983. Listening to Country is her much-acclaimed first book.