Gregory Day

Gregory Day is an Australian novelist, poet, and musician.

Life Gregory Day is a novelist, poet, essayist and musician based in Victoria, Australia. He is well known for novels which document generational, demographic, and environmental change on the 21st-century coast of Victoria, Australia. He has been much acclaimed for his musical compositions and field recordings, notably his settings and singing of the poetry of William Butler Yeats on the album The Black Tower, and his project The Flash Road, which narrates in song the building of the Great Ocean Road in southwest Victoria in the years following The Great War. Day is also the co-founder with artist and book designer, Sian Marlow, of the fine press limited edition literature and music publisher, Merrijig Word & Sound Co.

Awards and nominations

Commonwealth Writers' Prize, South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best First Book, 2006: The Patron Saint of Eels — shortlisted ALS Gold Medal, 2006: The Patron Saint of Eels — winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, 2008: Ron McCoy's Sea of Diamonds: A Novel — shortlisted Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, 2011: The Neighbour's Beans — winner Manly Artist Book Award, 2017: A Smile at Arm's Length — winner Tasmanian Literary Award, Tasmania Book Prize, 2017: Archipelago of Souls — shortlisted Nature Conservancy, Australia Nature Writing Prize, 2019: Summer On The Painkalac — shortlisted Miles Franklin Award, 2019: A Sand Archive — shortlisted Patrick White Award, 2020 — winner Nature Conservancy Australia Nature Writing Prize, 2021 – winner Miles Franklin Award, 2024: The Bell of the World – shortlisted Blake Poetry Prize, 2026: The Church Was Strangely Empty But The Day Outside Was Full — longlisted