Literature professor, novelist and breast cancer survivor Brenda Walker won this year’s Kibble Literary Award for Women Writers for Reading by Moonlight – a memoir of her illness. It is her second Kibble win and comes a year after her mother, Shirley Walker, won the award for her own memoir The Ghost at the Wedding. Kristel Thornell’s historic fiction Night Street won the Dobbie Literary Award for a first-published female writer…

Dr Kerry Arabena, CEO of the Lowitja Institute and an inaugural director of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, is the first Indigenous Australian to receive the J.G. Crawford Prize for academic excellence at the Australian National University. At the same graduation ceremony Megan Davis, Australia’s first Indigenous woman appointed to a UN body, was one of two Indigenous graduates to receive their Doctorates…

Girls took out six of the 17 category awards in the Prime Minister’s Awards for Skills Excellence in school-based vocational education. The PM’s awards recognise the highest achieving Vocational Student Prize winners which, together reward the country’s top students taking trades-related training in secondary school…

Professor Denise Bradley, a 20-year national education policy veteran, will head the Federal Government’s advisory panel to develop and implement the new National Trade Cadetship (NTC) scheme aimed at improving student’s career pathways from school into a trade…

Queensland Indigenous law academic Megan Davis is the first Indigenous Australian woman elected to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues being held in May. She is also a member of the Australian Government’s expert panel on the constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians…

Dr Moira McKinnon, an Australian public health infectious diseases specialist, is joint winner of the 2011 Calibre Prize for Outstanding Essay. Her work ‘Who killed Matilda?’ is an indigenous story drawn from her years working as a government adviser on communicable diseases…

Former Victorian politician and journalist Mary Delahunty will head Writing Australia – the newly-created national organisation representing the former writers’ centres of five eastern states…

Australian rugby referee Sarah Corrigan is one of eight women making up the International Rugby Board’s inaugural Women’s Referee Panel which aims to improve women’s refereeing standards at elite international levels …

Five Year 9 and 10 girls will travel to Gallipoli for Anzac Day Services in April as part of their 2011 Simpson Prize for their winning history essays on the Anzac legend…

Professor Linda Kristjanson, whose early pioneering work in palliative care led to an internationally-recognised research career, will become Swinburne University’s Vice-Chancellor and President on 16 May…