Tim Winton has been announced as the winner of the 2009 Miles Franklin Award for his novel Breath. This makes Winton the first four-time winner (in his own right) of the award, as he previously won for Shallows in 1984, Cloudstreet in 1992 and Dirt Music in 2002. Thea Astley also won the award four times but shared the award twice.
Winton did not attend the ceremony in Sydney and accepted his prize via a video link. He took the opportunity in his acceptance speech to again argue against the proposed change to Australian territorial copyright legislation. If the new regulations were in place - to restrict territorial copyright to 12 months following publication - he would have accepted the award holding an imported edition of his novel.
