Judith Wright was born in Armidale, New South Wales. The eldest child of Phillip Wright and his first wife, Ethel, she spent most of her formative years in Brisbane and Sydney.[2] Wright was of Cornish ancestry.[3] Following the early death of her mother, she lived with her aunt and then boarded at New England Girls' School after her father's remarriage in 1929. After graduating, Wright studied philosophy, English, psychology and history at the University of Sydney.[2][4] At the beginning of World War II, she returned to her father's station (ranch) to help during the shortage of labour caused by the war.
Wright's first book of poetry, The Moving Image, was published in 1946 while she was working at the University of Queensland as a research officer. Then, she had also worked with Clem Christesen on the literary magazine Meanjin, the first edition of which was published in late 1947.[4] In 1950 she moved to Mount Tamborine, Queensland, with the novelist and abstract philosopher Jack McKinney. Their daughter Meredith was born in the same year. They married in 1962, but Jack was to live only until 1966.[5]
In 1966, she published The Nature of Love, her first collection of short stories, through Sun Press, Melbourne. Set mainly in Queensland, they include 'The Ant-lion', 'The Vineyard Woman', 'Eighty Acres', 'The Dugong', 'The Weeping Fig' and 'The Nature of Love', all first published in The Bulletin. Wright was nominated for the 1967 Nobel Prize for Literature.[6]
With David Fleay, Kathleen McArthur and Brian Clouston, Wright was a founding member and, from 1964 to 1976, president, of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland. In 1991, she was the second Australian to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.[4]
She was involved in the Poets Union.[7]
For the last three decades of her life, Wright lived near the New South Wales town of Braidwood.[8] She moved to the Braidwood area to be closer to H. C. "Nugget" Coombs, her lover of 25 years, who was based in Canberra.[9][10]
Wright started to lose her hearing in her mid-20s and became completely deaf by 1992.[9]
