Cassandra Pybus

Cassandra Jean Pybus FAHA (born 29 September 1947) is an Australian historian and writer. She is a former professorial fellow in history at the University of Sydney, and has published extensively on Australian and American history.[1]

Pybus was born in Hobart, Tasmania and educated at North Sydney Girls High School and the University of Sydney.[2] Her mother, Betty Pybus, was a pioneer of women's health in Sydney and Tasmania.[3]

From 1989 to 1994, Pybus was editor of the literary magazine Island. She won the Colin Roderick Award in 1993 for Gross Moral Turpitude, a re-examination of the case of Sydney Sparkes Orr, a Northern Irish academic who became embroiled in a scandal involving a relationship with a student whilst working at the University of Tasmania.[4] In 2000, she won an Adelaide Festival Award for Literature for The Devil and James McAuley, a biography of the poet James McAuley.[5]

Pybus was awarded the Centenary Medal in 2001 for outstanding contribution to Tasmanian and Australian literature and education.[6]

In 2020 she was shortlisted for the Nonfiction Book Award at the Queensland Literary Awards for Truganini[7] and for the Nonfiction prize at the 2021 Indie Book Awards[8] as well as the 2021 Biography book of the year at the Australian Book Industry Awards with Truganini.[9] In August 2021 she won the National Biography Award with Truganini,[10] while in November 2021 she was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.[11]