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The poet Robert Adamson has been named the recipient of the 2011 Patrick White Award. Adamson was born in Sydney on 1943 and visited the Hawkesbury River district of New South Wales on a number of occasons when he was a child. He took to poetry in gaol and has become one of the most awarded poets of the past twenty years in Australia. His major collections include The Clean Dark, The Goldfinches of Baghdad and The Golden Bird. The Patrick White Award was established by the author using his 1973 Nobel Prize Award to initiate a trust fund. It's aim is to recognise writers who have been highly creative over a number of years but who have not received their due critical acclaim. | |
The winners of the 2011 Children's Book Council of
Australia Book of the Year Winners were announced recently.
The winners in the categories were:
Older Readers Book of the Year
The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett (Viking)
Honour Books:
Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley (Pan Macmillan)
The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher by Doug MacLeod (Penguin Books)
Younger Readers Book of the Year
The Red Wind by Isobelle Carmody (Viking)
Honour Books:
Just a Dog by Michael Gerard Bauer (Omnibus Books)
Violet Mackerel's Brilliant Plot by Anna Branford. Illus: Sarah Davis (Walker Books)
Early Childhood Book of the Year
Maudie and Bear by Jam Omerod. Illus: Freya Blackwood (Little Hare Books)
Honour Books:
The Tall Man and the Twelve Babies by Tom Niland Champion and Kilmeny Niland. Illus: Deborah Niland (Allen & Unwin)
Look See, Look at Me by Leonie Norrington. Illus: Dee Huxley (Allen & Unwin)
Picture Book of the Year
Mirror by Jeannie Baker (Walker Books)
Hamlet by Nicki Greenburg (Allen & Unwin)
Honour Books:
Why I Love Australia by Bronwyn Bancroft (Little Hard Books)
My Uncle's Donkey by Tohby Riddle (Viking)
Eve Pownall Book of the Year
The Return of the Word Spy by Ursula Dubosarsky. Illus: Tohby Riddle (Viking)
Honour Books:
Drawn From the Heart: A Memoir by Ron Brooks (Allen & Unwin)
Our World: Bardi Jaawi: Life at Ardiyooloon by One Arm Point Remote Community School (Magabala Books)
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The 2011 Kibble and Dobbie Awards have been announced with Brenda Walker the winner of the Kibble Literary Award for her memoir Reading by Moonlight. The winner of the 2011 Dobbie Award was Kristel Thornell for her novel Night Street. The Kibble Award is for established writers and the Dobbie for first-time authors. |
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The winner of this year's Australian/Vogel Award has been anounced as The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson. In a major change from previous year's the book has been published to coincide with the announcement rarther than the usual year later. This is a good move in my view. Slightly risky, in that the book may win the award and yet still need a lot of work, but it's a good way of imprinting the work on the reading public and is to be commended. |
The Barbara Jefferis Award is presented to "the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society". Previous winners have been Feather Man by Rhyll McMaster in 2008, The Spare Room by Helen Garner in 2009, and The China Garden by Kristina Olsson in 2010.
The shortlisted works for the 2011 Barbara Jefferis Award have been announced. The shortlist comprises:
The Good Daughter by Honey Brown (Penguin Books/Viking)
Like Being A Wife by Catherine Harris (Random House/Vintage)
Sustenance by Simone Lazaroo (UWA Publishing/UWAP)
Indelible Ink by Fiona McGregor (Scribe)
Come Inside by G.L. Osbourne (Clouds of Magellan)
The winner will be announced on Saturday 9 April 2011.
 | Shaun Tan's short animated film, The Lost Thing, based on his book of the same name, has been nominated for an Oscar. This, of course, puts Tan into rather rarefied company. The nominees in this category are: "Day & Night" Teddy Newton "The Gruffalo" Jakob Schuh and Max Lang "Let's Pollute" Geefwee Boedoe "The Lost Thing" Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann "Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary)" Bastien Dubois Gerard Elson, from Readings bookshop, interviewed Tan back in November about the making of the film. The interview page contains a link to the film's trailer. The Awards will be presented in Los Angeles on 27th February. |
"The $25,000 cash award is given to a writer who has been highly creative over a long period but has not necessarily received adequate recognition. Such writers are automatically eligible without the necessity for submissions."
Previous winners of the award have included Beverley Farmer, David Rowbotham, Jannette Turner Hospital, and Gerald Murnane.
Foster's most recent novel is Sons of the Rumour. The author also won the Miles Franklin Award in 1997 for The Glade within the Grove.
In his acceptance speech on the weekend Foster got stuck into a particular author living in Australia who he believed showed "no class" in continuing to contest literary awards when he had already won two Bookers and a Nobel. Although the author in question was not named it's not too diffcult to figure out who Foster was referring to.
The winners of the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were announced last night.
The winners are:
The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
Truth, Peter Temple, Text Publishing
The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction
Reading by Moonlight: How Books Saved a Life, Brenda Walker, Penguin Group Australia
The Young Adult Fiction Prize
Raw Blue, Kirsty Eagar, Penguin Group Australia
The CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry
Possession, Anna Kerdijk Nicholson, Five Islands Press
The Louis Esson Prize for Drama
And No More Shall We Part, Tom Holloway, A Bit Of Argy Bargy
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
Seeing Truganini, David Hansen, Australian Book Review
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
House of Sticks, Peggy Frew
The John Curtin Prize for Journalism
Who Killed Mr Ward?, Janine Cohen and Liz Jackson, Four Corners, ABC Television
The Prize for First Book of History
Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919-1939, Clare Corbould, Harvard University Press
The Prize for Indigenous Writing
Legacy, Larissa Behrendt, University of Queensland Press
The shortlisted works for the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards have been released.
The shortlists are:
The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
Parrot and Olivier in America, Peter Carey, Penguin Group Australia
The Bath Fugues, Brian Castro, Giramondo Publishing
Summertime, J.M. Coetzee, Random House Australia
Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey, Allen & Unwin
Truth, Peter Temple, Text Publishing
The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction
Popeye Never Told You: Childhood Memories of the War, Rodney Hall, Murdoch Books
A Swindler's Progress: Nobles and Convicts in the Age of Liberty, Kirsten McKenzie, UNSW Press
Captain Cook Was Here, Maria Nugent, Cambridge University Press
Otherland: A Journey With My Daughter, Maria Tumarkin, Random House Australia
Reading by Moonlight: How Books Saved a Life, Brenda Walker, Penguin Group Australia
The Young Adult Fiction Prize
Raw Blue, Kirsty Eagar, Penguin Group Australia
Swerve, Phillip Gwynne, Penguin Group Australia
Beatle Meets Destiny, Gabrielle Williams, Penguin Group Australia
The CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry
Beneath Our Armour, Peter Bakowski, Hunter Publishers
Possession, Anna Kerdijk Nicholson, Five Islands Press
The Adoption Order, Ian McBryde, Five Islands Press
The Louis Esson Prize for Drama
Moth, Declan Greene, Arena Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre
And No More Shall We Part, Tom Holloway, A Bit Of Argy Bargy
Furious Mattress, Melissa Reeves, Malthouse Theatre
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
Patriot Acts, Waleed Aly, The Monthly
Stupid Money, Gideon Haigh, Griffith Review
Seeing Truganini, David Hansen, Australian Book Review
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
Winsome of Rangoon, Michelle Aung Thin
House of Sticks, Peggy Frew
Cambodia Darkness and Light, Andrew Nette
The John Curtin Prize for Journalism
Shutting Down Sharleen, Eurydice Aroney and Tom Morton, Hindsight, ABC Radio National
Who Killed Mr Ward?, Janine Cohen and Liz Jackson, Four Corners, ABC Television
Stop at Nothing: The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull, Annabel Crabb, Quarterly Essay
The Prize for First Book of History
From Superwoman to Domestic Goddesses: the Rise and Fall of Feminism, Natasha Campo, Peter Lang International Academic Publishers
Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919-1939, Clare Corbould, Harvard University Press
Rethinking Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century France, Julie Kalman, Cambridge University Press
The Prize for Indigenous Writing
Legacy, Larissa Behrendt, University of Queensland Press
Ten Hail Marys, Kate Howarth, University of Queensland Press
Hey Mum, What's a Half-Caste?, Lorraine McGee-Sippel, Magabala Books
The winners will be announced at a dinner to be held on September 28th.
The John Button prize has been named in honour of the late Senator and Industry Minister and is given "to the best piece of non-fiction writing on politics or public policy in the previous 12 months." Judging is by a panel of nominated persons, including Nobel literature laureate JM Coetzee.
The winner of the prize was recently announced as being Peter Sutton, for his book The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia and the end of the Liberal Consensus.
The shortlisted works for the 2010 prize were:
Paul Kelly, March of Patriots
Noel Pearson, Radical Hope
Peter Sutton, The Politics of Suffering
Laura Tingle, "Tensions escalate over Rudd's kitchen cabinet"
The winners of the 2010 Ned Kelly Awards were announced during the recent Melbourne Writers Festival. These awards honour the best Australian writing within the crime genre during the previous year. They are presented by the Crime Writers Association of Australia.
The winners were:
True Crime
Kathy Marks, Pitcairn: Paradise Lost, Harper Collins
Best First Fiction
Mark Dapin, King of the Cross, Macmillan
Best Fiction
Garry Disher, Wyatt, Text
SH Harvey Short Story Award
Zane Lovitt, "Leaving the Fountainhead"
Lifetime Achievement
The winners of the 2010 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards have now been announced.
FictionThe winners of the 2010 Davitt Awards have been announced. "The Davitt Awards (named in honour of Ellen Davitt (1812-1879) who wrote Australia's first mystery novel, Force and Fraud in 1865) are presented by the Sisters in Crime Australia association. The awards are presented for Australian crime fiction, by women, for both adults and young adults."
The winners in each category were presented in Melbourne on Saturday 28th August.
The winners were:
Adult Fiction
Sharp Shooter by Marianne Delacourt
Children's and Young Adult Fiction
Liar by Justine Larbalestier
True Crime
Lady Killer: How Conman Bruce Burrell Kidnapped and Killed Rich Women for Their Money by Candace Sutton and Ellen Connolly
Readers Choice
Forbidden Fruit
by Kerry Greenwood
The shortlisted novels for the 2010 Man Booker Prize have been announced.
The longlisted works are:
Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue, Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)
Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)
Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy, The Long Song (Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)
Tom McCarthy, C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
Interesting to see that both Mitchell and Tsiolkas were dropped off the longlist. If Carey wins he will be the first three-time winner. He is also the only previous winner of the award on this year's shortlist.
The winner will be announced on Tuesda 12th October, 2010.
Seems that the major items of interest, on the Australian literature scene, over the past two weeks has been the number of awards that have either announced their winners or short/long lists.
One that I was involved with was the Hugo Awards (for excellence in the fields of science fiction and fantasy for 2009) which were announced at Aussiecon 4 on September 5th. The major Australian interest was Shaun Tan's win for Best Professional Artist, which was met with wild applause on the night. You can read the full list of winners here, and even have a look at the voting and nominating statistics.
The Hugo Award itself looked like this:
The rocket is standard from year to year but the base - this year designed and built by Nick Stathopoulos with input from Lewis Morley and Grant Gittus - is left to the convention committee to organise.
Details of other awards will follow over the next few days. I didn't think you would appreciate getting them all in one big lump.
The nominees for the 2010 World Fantasy Awards (for works published during 2009) have been released.
Of interest to Australians are the following nominees:
Novella
"Sea-Hearts" by Margo Lanagan
Anthology
Eclipse Three edited by Jonathan Strahan
Special Award - Professional
Jonathan Strahan for editing anthologies
The awards will be presented at World Fantasy Convention 36, to be held in Columbus Ohio, USA, October 28-31, 2010.
The winners of the 2010 CBCA Book of the Year Awards have been announced. These awards honour the best in Australian books for children.
Older Readers Book of the Year
Winner
Jarvis 24 by David Metzenthen (Penguin Group Australia)
Honour Books
The Winds of Heaven by Judith Clarke (Allen & Unwin)
A Small Free Kiss in the Dark by Glenda Millard (Allen & Unwin)
Younger Readers Book of the Year
Winner
Darius Bell And The Glitter Pool by Odo Hirsch (Allen & Unwin)
Honour Books
Pearl Verses The World by Sally Murphy (Walker Books)
Running With The Horses by Alison Lester (Viking, Penguin Group Australia)
Early Childhood Book of the Year
Winner
Bear And Chook By The Sea by Lisa Shanahan and Emma Quay (Lothian Children's Books, Hachette)
Honour Books
Clancy and Millie and the Very Fine House by Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood (Little Hare Books)
Kip by Christina Booth (Windy Hollow Books)
Picture Book of the Year
Winner
The Hero Of Little Street by Gregory Rogers (Allen & Unwin)
Honour Books
Fox And Fine Feathers by Narelle Oliver (Omnibus Books, Scholastic Australia)
Isabella's Garden by Glenda Millard and Rebecca Cool (Walker Books)
The Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
Winner
Australian Backyard Explorer by Peter Macinnis (National Library of Australia)
Honour Books
Maralinga: The Anangu Story by The Yalata And Oak Valley Communities (Allen & Unwin)
Polar Eyes: A Journey to Antarctica by Tanya Patrick and Nicholas Hutcheson (CSIRO)
The shortlists for the 2010 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards have now been released.
Fiction
Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America, Penguin Group (Australia)
Brian Castro, The Bath Fugues, Giramondo Publishing Company
J.M. Coetzee, Summertime, Random House Australia
Steven Lang, 88 Lines About 44 Women, Penguin Group (Australia)
Alex Miller, Lovesong, Allen & Unwin
Emerging Queensland Author - Manuscript Award
Matthew Lamb, Down to the River
Nikki McWatters, The Desert of Paradise
Noel Mengel, RPM
Unpublished Indigenous Writer - Arts Queensland David Unaipon Award
Sam Cook, ACES, DEUCES, KINGS and QUEENS
Tjanara Goreng-Goreng, The Red Earth
Jeanine Leane, Purple Threads
Shawn Wondunna-Foley, Dingo finds a friend
Non-Fiction Book Award
Krissy Kneen, Affection, The Text Publishing Company
Mary-Rose MacColl, The Birth Wars, University of Queensland Press
Alasdair McGregor, Grand Obsessions: The Life and Work of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, Penguin Group (Australia)
Mark Tredinnick, The Blue Plateau: A Landscape Memoir, University of Queensland Press
Brenda Walker, Reading by Moonlight: How books saved a life, Penguin Group (Australia)
History Book - Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland Award
Bain Attwood, Possession: Batman's Treaty and the Matter of History, Melbourne University Publishing Limited
Maria Hill, Diggers and Greeks: the Australian campaigns in Greece and Crete, University of New South Wales Press
Ian Hoskins, Sydney Harbour: A history, University of New South Wales Press
Grace Karskens, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney, Allen & Unwin
Thomas Keneally, Australians: Origins to Eureka, Allen & Unwin
Children's Book - Mary Ryan's Award
Bronwyn Bancroft, Why I Love Australia, Little Hare Books
Glenda Millard, Isabella's Garden, Illustrated by Rebecca Cool, Walker Books Australia
Glenda Millard, All the Colours of Paradise, Illustrated by Stephen Michael King, HarperCollinsPublishers Aust Pty Limited
Sally Murphy, Toppling, Illustrated by Rhian Nest James, Walker Books Australia
Narelle Oliver, Fox and Fine Feathers, Omnibus Books
Young Adult Book Award
Phillip Gwynne, Swerve, Penguin Group (Australia)
Justine Larbalestier, Liar, Allen & Unwin
Melina Marchetta, The Piper's Son, Penguin Group (Australia)
Scott Westerfeld, Leviathan, Illustrated by Keith Thompson, Penguin Group (Australia)
Richard Yaxley, Drink the Air, Richard Yaxley
Science Writer Award
Elizabeth Finkel, "Black harvest" (Cosmos: The Science of Everything - Issue 27), Luna Media
Elizabeth Finkel, "The trouble with genes" (Cosmos: The Science of Everything - Issue 31), Luna Media
Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change, Allen & Unwin
Sonya Pemberton, Catching Cancer, December Films and Pemberton Films
Julian Pepperell, Fishes of the open ocean: a natural history and illustrated guide, Illustrated by Guy Harvey, University of New South Wales Press
Poetry Collection - Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award
Peter Boyle, Apocrypha, Vagabond Press
Jennifer Maiden, Pirate Rain, Giramondo Publishing Company
Les Murray, Taller When Prone, Black Inc.
Maria Takolander, Ghostly Subjects, Salt Publishing
Australian Short Story Collection - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award
Peter Goldsworthy, Gravel, Penguin Group (Australia)
Karen Hitchcock, Little White Slips, Picador
Thomas Shapcott, Gatherers and Hunters, Wakefield Press
Archie Weller, The Window Seat, University of Queensland Press
Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate - The Harry Williams Award
Annabel Crabb, Quarterly Essay 34: Stop at Nothing - The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull, Black Inc.
Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change, Allen & Unwin
Marcia Langton, "The resource curse", Griffith Review
Mary-Rose MacColl, The Birth Wars, University of Queensland Press
Michael McKenna, "Shocked to the core", The Australian, 23 June 2009
Film Script - Screen Queensland Award
Shirley Barrett, South Solitary, Macgowan Films Pty Ltd
David Michôd, Animal Kingdom, Porchlight Films Pty Ltd
David Roach, Beneath Hill 60, The Silence Productions Pty Ltd
Drama Script (Stage) Award
Daniel Keene, Duets
Joanna Murray-Smith, Rockabye, Currency Press Pty Ltd
Melissa Reeves, Furious Mattress
Sven Swenson, The Bitterling
Rick Viede, Whore
Television Script - QUT Creative Industries Award
Glen Dolman, Hawke, The Film Company
Peter Duncan, Rake Episode 1 "R v Murray", Essential Media and Entertainment Pty Ltd
Peter Gawler, A Model Daughter: The Killing of Caroline Byrne, Screentime Pty Ltd
John Misto, Sisters of War, Australian Broadcasting Corporation/Pericles Film Productions Pty Ltd
The winners will be announced on August 31st.
The shortlists for the 2010 Ned Kelly Awards have now been announced. These awards honor the best Australian writing within the crime genre during the previous year. They are presented by the Crime Writers Association of Australia.
True Crime
Peter Doyle, Crooks Like Us, Historic Houses Trust
Kathy Marks, Pitcairn: Paradise Lost, Harper Collins
Robert M.Kaplan, Medical Murder, Allen & Unwin
Best First Fiction
Andrew Croome, Document Z, Allen & Unwin
Mark Dapin, King of the Cross, Macmillan
Robin Adair, Death and the Running Patterer, Penguin
Best Fiction
Lenny Bartulin, The Black Russian, Scribe Publications
Michael Robotham, Bleed For Me, Hatchette
Garry Disher, Wyatt, Text
SH Harvey Short Story Award
Lucy Sussex, "The Fountain of Justice"
Zane Lovitt, "Leaving the Fountainhead"
Robert Goodman, "The Travertine Fountain"
Lifetime Achievement
The winners will be announced on Friday September 3rd during the Melbourne Writers Festival.
The longlists for the 2010 Davitt Awards have been released. "The Davitt Awards (named in honour of Ellen Davitt (1812-1879) who wrote Australia's first mystery novel, Force and Fraud in 1865) are presented by the Sisters in Crime Australia association. The awards are presented for Australian crime fiction, by women, for both adults and young adults."
The winners in each category will be announced at a special awards dinner to be held in Melbourne on Saturday 28th August.
The longlisted works are:
Adult Fiction
Sharp Shooter by Marianne Delacourt
Forbidden Fruit by Kerry Greenwood
Red Dust by Fleur McDonald
Steel River by Antoinette Eklund
Dark Country by Bronwyn Parry
The Labyrinth of Drowning by Alex Palmer
Too Many Murders by Colleen McCulloch
A Beautiful Death by Fiona McIntosh
Siren by Tara Moss
Gene Thieves by Maria Quinn
Gladiatrix by Rhonda Roberts
Move to Strike by Sydney Bauer
Pearl in A Cage by Joy Dettman
Bloodborn by Kathryn Fox
The Killing Hands by PD Martin
The Devil's Staircase by Helen Fitzgerald
Riding High by Emma Boling
Red Queen by H.M. Brown
Ghost Child: The Past Is Always Close Behind by Caroline Overington
Black Ice by Leah Giarrantano
Pestle & Mortar by Carol Gibson
Children's and Young Adult Fiction
The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks
Genius Wars by Catherine Jinks
Liar by Justine Larbalestier
Hedgeburners: An A~Z Mystery by Goldie Alexander
Pop Princess by Isabelle Merlin
Cupid's Arrow by Isabelle Merlin
Conspiracy 365 - January by Gabrielle Lord
The Walk Right in Detective Agency - Bad News for Milk Bay by Moya Simons
The Walk Right in Detective Agency - On the Case The Walk by Moya Simons
The Walk Right in Detective Agency - Mischief Afoot by Moya Simons
True Crime
Lady Killer: How Conman Bruce Burrell Kidnapped and Killed Rich Women for Their Money by Candace Sutton and Ellen Connolly
A Greater Guilt: Constance Emilie Kent and the Road Murder by Noelene Kyle
Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly by Sue Bursztynski
Salvation - The True Story of Rod Braybon's Fight for Justice by Vikki Petraitis
Hotel Kerobokan: The Shocking Inside Story of Bali's Most Notorious Jail by Kathryn Bonella
Lambs to the Slaughter by Debi Marshall
Blood Brother: Justice at Last by Robin Bowles
Outside the Law 3 by Lindy Cameron (ed)
Forensic Investigator: True Stories from the Life of a Country Crime Scene Cop by Esther Mckay
The longlist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize has been announced.
The longlisted works are:
Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue, Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)
Helen Dunmore, The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)
Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)
Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy, The Long Song (Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)
Tom McCarthy, C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Zacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)
Lisa Moore, February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Paul Murray, Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)
Rose Tremain, Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)
Alan Warner, The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
Carey as the only previous winner and two Australians on the list in Carey and Tsiolkas. Though I'm wondering if Australia might just be able to claim another connection with Paul Murray's Skippy Dies. Must check that one out.
The John Button prize has been named in honour of the late Senator and Industry Minister and is given "to the best piece of non-fiction writing on politics or public policy in the previous 12 months." Judging is by a panel of nominated persons.
The shortlisted works for the 2010 prize are:
Paul Kelly, March of Patriots
Noel Pearson, Radical Hope
Peter Sutton, The Politics of Suffering
Laura Tingle, "Tensions escalate over Rudd's kitchen cabinet"
The winner of the prize will be announced at the Melbourne Writers Festival on September 3.
Ate the end of last week, the shortlisted works for the 2010 Prime Minister's Literary Awards were announced. In the past the awards have been presented solely in the Fiction and Non-Fiction categories. This year the extra categories of Young Adult and Children's Fiction have been added.
The shortlisted works are:
Fiction
Summertime by J. M. Coetzee
The Book of Emmett by Deborah Forster
The Lakewoman by Alan Gould
Dog Boy by Eva Hornung
Ransom by David Malouf
Lovesong by Alex Miller
As the Earth turns Silver by Alison Wong
Non-Fiction
The Water Dreamers: The Remarkable History of Our Dry Continent by Michael Cathcart
Strange Places: A Memoir of Mental Illness by Will Elliott
The Colony: A History of Early Sydney by Grace Karskens
The Life and Death of Democracy by John Keane
The Blue Plateau: A Landscape Memoir by Mark Tredinnick
The Ghost at the Wedding by Shirley Walker
Young Adult Fiction
Stolen by Lucy Christopher
The Winds of Heaven by Judith Clarke
Confessions of a Liar, Thief and Failed Sex God by Bill Condon
The Museum of Mary Child by Cassandra Golds
Swerve by Phillip Gwynne
Jarvis 24 by David Metzenthen
Beatle meets Destiny by Gabrielle Williams
Children's Fiction
Cicada Summer by Kate Constable
The Terrible Plop by Ursula Dubosarsky and illustrator Andrew Joyner
Just Macbeth by Andy Griffiths and illustrator Terry Denton
Mr Chicken goes to Paris by Leigh Hobbs
Running with the Horses by Alison Lester
Star Jumps by Lorraine Marwood
Mannie and the Long Brave Day by Martine Murray and illustrator Sally Rippin
Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children by Jen Storer
Harry and Hopper by Margaret Wild and illustrator Freya Blackwood
The winners in each category will be announced sometime, but, as in previous years, the relevant department seems a little coy about publicising the date of that announcement.
Minister for Environment Protection, Heritage and the Arts Peter Garrett released the shortlists at Readings Bookshop in Carlton, and you can see some pictures of that event here.
"The Australian's" literary weblog, "A Pair of Ragged Claws", had a few comments about the lists, as did James Bradley on his "A City of Tongues" weblog.
When the judges for the 2010 Man Booker prize were announced back in December last year, the press release stated that the longlist, or Man Booker Dozen (12 or 13 titles), would be released some time in late July. A couple of weeks in other words. And I'm wondering if this year might be a "genre" year for the prize.
Peter Temple's Miles Franklin Award-winning Truth was released in the UK in hardback in January, and in paperback in July, so that one should be eligible. For a while there I thought that China Mieville's The City & The City might have had a chance, but a quick look at Amazon UK shows it was released in May 2009, so it was eligible last year.
Or maybe I'm getting as confused as everyone else about books that cross the boundaries between literary forms. Looking back on it now can anyone tell me how "magic realism" differed in any great way from "fantasy"? Does anyone write in the "magic realism" genre any more? And where does David Mitchell's work fit? Is The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet a straight historical novel (which would imply that it's a front-runner) or a slightly fantastical alternate Japan that title and synopsis seems to point at (which implies it doesn't have a hope)? I have no idea.
For a number of years I spent the early part of each year building a list of shortlist "possibles" for the Booker, scanning the UK book reviews looking for highly-praised works, or searching for future releases of past winners. And each year I built up a list of about 50-60 books that I thought might have a chance.
But not this year. I've been too busy with extra-curricula activities and haven't got the faintest idea of who is in the running. It will be good to be able to scan the list and say "Who's that...?" It might actually make it a bit interesting for a change.
The winners of the 2010 Australian Book Industry Award were announced on June 30th, but the full list of winners has taken a little while to appear on the Australian Publishers Association website.
The full list of winners:
Chain Bookseller of the Year
WA Dymocks Garden City (Booragoon)
Independent Bookseller of the Year
Vic Readings Books Music Film Carlton
Specialist Bookseller of the Year
WA Boffins Bookshop
Bookseller Marketing Campaign of the Year
Shearers Bookshop, for The Truth Hurts
Small Publisher of the Year
Scribe Publications
Publisher of the Year
Allen & Unwin
Distributor of the Year
United Book Distributors
Publisher Marketing Campaign of the Year
Murdoch Books, for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, written by Stieg Larsson
International Success of the Year
Allen & Unwin, for The Slap
Illustrated Book of the Year
Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion, written by Stephanie Alexander, published by Penguin Australia
Biography of the Year
Bart: My Life, written by J.B. Cummings, published by Pan Macmillan
General Non-Fiction Book of the Year
Australians: Origins to Eureka, written by Thomas Keneally, published by Allen & Unwin
Book of the Year for Younger Children (age range 0 to 8 years)
Baby Wombat's Week, written by Jackie French & illustrated by Bruce Whatley, published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Book of the Year for Older Children (age range 8 to 14 years)
Parlour Games for Modern Families, written by Myfanwy Jones & Spiri Tsintziras, published by Scribe Publications
Literary Fiction Book of the Year
Jasper Jones, written by Craig Silvey, published by Allen & Unwin
General Fiction Book of the Year
Truth, written by Peter Temple, published by The Text Publishing Company
Newcomer of the Year (debut writer)
Piano Lessons, written by Anna Goldsworthy, published by Black Inc.
Book of the Year 2010
Jasper Jones, written by Craig Silvey, published by Allen & Unwin
You can read the full shortlists here.
The winners of the 2010 NSW Premier's Literary Awards have been announced.
The winners were:
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
J.M. Coetzee, Summertime Random House Australia (Knopf)
Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction
Paul McGeough, Kill Khalid: Mossad's Failed Hit ... And the Rise of Hamas Allen & Unwin
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
Jordie Albiston, the sonnet according to 'm' John Leonard Press
Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature
Pamela Rushby, When the Hipchicks Went to War Hachette Australia
Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature
Allan Baillie, Krakatoa Lighthouse Penguin Group (Australia)
Community Relations Commission Award
Abbas El-Zein, Leave to Remain: A Memoir University of Queensland Press
UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing for Fiction
Andrew Croome, Document Z Allen & Unwin
Script Writing Award
Jane Campion, Bright Star Jan Chapman Films
Aviva Ziegler & Veronica Fury, Fairweather Man Fury Productions
Play Award
This category did not have a shortlist. This year a grant of $30,000 will be made
available to support professional development opportunities for new playwrights in New
South Wales in 2011.
NSW Premier's Prize for Literary Scholarship
Philip Mead, Networked Language: Culture and History in Australian Poetry Australian Scholarly Publishing
The People's Choice Award
Cate Kennedy, The World Beneath Scribe Publications
Book of the Year
Paul McGeough, Kill Khalid: Mossad's Failed Hit ... And the Rise of Hamas Allen & Unwin
Special Award
The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature
You can read the full shortlists here.
The winners of the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize have been announced.
Best Book was won by Rana Dasgupta for his novel Solo, and Best First Book was won by Australian Glenda Guest for her novel Siddon Rock.
You can read the full list of shortlisted works here and the winners of the regional prizes here.
The shortlisted works for the 2010 Miles Franklin Award have been released.
The shortlist consists of:
The Bath Fugues, Brian Castro (Giramondo Publishing)
The Book of Emmett, Deborah Forster (Random House)
Butterfly, Sonya Hartnett (Penguin Group)
Lovesong, Alex Miller (Allen & Unwin)
Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey (Allen & Unwin)
Truth, Peter Temple (Text Publishing)
The winner will be announced on June 22.
The shortlisted works for the 2010 NSW Premier's Literary Awards have been announced.
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
J.M. Coetzee, Summertime Random House Australia (Knopf)
Richard Flanagan, Wanting Random House Australia (Knopf)
Cate Kennedy, The World Beneath Scribe Publications
Steven Lang, 88 Lines About 44 Women Penguin Group (Australia)
David Malouf, Ransom Random House Australia (Knopf)
Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones Allen & Unwin
Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction
Michael Cathcart, The Water Dreamers: The Remarkable History of Our Dry Continent The Text Publishing Company
Graham Freudenberg, Churchill and Australia Pan Macmillan Australia
Anna Goldsworthy, Piano Lessons Black Inc. Publishing
Richard Guilliatt & Peter Hohnen, The Wolf: How One German Raider Terrorized Australia and the Southern Oceans in the First World War Random House Australia (William Heinemann)
Paul McGeough, Kill Khalid: Mossad's Failed Hit ... And the Rise of Hamas Allen & Unwin
Noel Pearson, Up From The Mission: Selected Writings Black Inc. Publishing
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
Jordie Albiston, the sonnet according to 'm' John Leonard Press
Emily Ballou, The Darwin Poems University of Western Australia Press
Judith Beveridge, Storm and Honey Giramondo Publishing Company
Emma Jones, The Striped World Faber and Faber London
Morgan Yasbincek, White Camel John Leonard Press
Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature
Kathy Charles, Hollywood Ending The Text Publishing Company
Richard Harland, Worldshaker Allen & Unwin
Justine Larbalestier, Liar Allen & Unwin
Glenda Millard, A Small Free Kiss in the Dark Allen & Unwin
Kirsty Murray, Vulture's Gate Allen & Unwin
Pamela Rushby, When the Hipchicks Went to War Hachette Australia
Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature
Allan Baillie, Krakatoa Lighthouse Penguin Group (Australia)
Morris Gleitzmann, Grace Penguin Group (Australia)
Lincoln Hall, Alive in the Death Zone: Mountain Survival Random House Australia
Richard Newsome, The Billionaire's Curse The Text Publishing Company
Gregory Rogers, The Hero of Little Street Allen & Unwin
Margaret Wild & Freya Blackwood (Illus), Harry and Hopper Omnibus Books
Community Relations Commission Award
Abbas El-Zein, Leave to Remain: A Memoir University of Queensland Press
Tim Soutphommasane, Reclaiming Patriotism: Nation-building for Australian Progressives Cambridge University Press
UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing for Fiction
Steven Amsterdam, Things We Didn't See Coming Sleepers Publishing
Kathy Charles, Hollywood Ending The Text Publishing Company
Andrew Croome, Document Z Allen & Unwin
Glenda Guest, Siddon Rock Random House Australia (Vintage)
Karen Hitchcock, Little White Slips Pan Macmillan Australia
Kirsten Reed, The Ice Age The Text Publishing Company
Script Writing Award
Jane Campion, Bright Star Jan Chapman Films
Kristen Dunphy & Michael Miller, East West 101: Episode 13 Knapman Wyld Television Pty Ltd
Adam Elliot, Mary and Max Melodrama Pictures Pty Ltd
Fiona Seres, Tangle: Episode One Southern Star
Warwick Thornton, Samson and Delilah Scarlett Pictures Pty Ltd
Aviva Ziegler & Veronica Fury, Fairweather Man Fury Productions
Play Award
This category does not have a shortlist. This year a grant of $30,000 will be made
available to support professional development opportunities for new playwrights in New
South Wales in 2011.
NSW Premier's Prize for Literary Scholarship
Roslyn Jolly, Robert Louis Stevenson in the Pacific: Travel, Empire, and the Author's Profession Ashgate Publishing Limited
Philip Mead, Networked Language: Culture and History in Australian Poetry Australian Scholarly Publishing
Brigid Rooney, Literary Activists: Writer-intellectuals and Australian Public Life University of Queensland Press
The winners of these awards will be announced on May 17th.
Short Fiction
Best Science Fiction Novel
The long, longlist of books nominated for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award have now been announced. The full list contains 156 titles from all parts of the globe, and, as usual, I've made an attempt to list all the Australian books on the list. Which also means that I've probably missed a few, in which case please feel free to write and let me know of any omissions.
The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks
His Illegal Self, Peter Carey
God of Speed, Luke Davies
Wanting, Richard Flanagan
The Spare Room, Helen Garner
The Forgotten Garden, Kate Morton
A Fraction of the Whole, Steve Toltz
The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas
Breath, Tim Winton
Sea of Many Returns, Arnold Zable
The winners of the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Awards have been announced today.
The winner of the fiction award was The Boat by Nam Le, and the non-fiction award was shared between House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann by Evelyn Juers and Drawing the Global Colour Line by Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds.
You can read the full shortlists here.
The 2009 World Fantasy Awards were presented at the convention held in San Jose over the weekend.
The full list of nominees is available here. A number of Australians were up for awards and it's a great pleasure to congratulate Margo Lanagan, whose novel Tender Morsels tied for the Best Novel Award (with The Shadow Year by Jeff Ford), and Shaun Tan who won the award for Best Artist.
The 2011 World Fantasy Convention will be held in San Diego.
The winners of the 2009 NSW Premier's History Awards have been announced. You can read the full list of shortlisted titles here.
The winners were:
Australian History Prize ($15,000)
Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan, Robin Gerster (Scribe)
General History Prize ($15,000)
The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen, Warwick Anderson (Johns Hopkins University Press)
Multimedia History Prize ($15,000)
A Northern Town, Rachel Landers and Dylan Bowen (Pony Films)
NSW Community and Regional History Prize ($15,000)
Up on the Hill: A History of St Patrick's College, Goulburn, David Bollen (UNSW Press)
Young People's History Prize ($15,000)
Captain Cook's Apprentice, Anthony Hill (Penguin)
The shortlisted works for the NSW Premier's History Awards were announced in early October. The winners will be presented on Tuesday 27th October.
The shortlisted works in each category are:
Australian History Prize ($15,000)
Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan, Robin Gerster (Scribe)
Shattered Anzacs: Living with the Scars of War, Marina Larsson (UNSW Press)
Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography, Jill Roe (Fourth Estate)
General History Prize ($15,000)
The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen, Warwick Anderson (Johns Hopkins University Press)
Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919-1939, Clare Corbould (Harvard University Press)
Treason on the Airwaves: Three Allied Broadcasters on Axis Radio during World War Two, Judith Keene (Praeger Publishers)
Darwin's Armada: How Four Voyagers to Australasia won the Battle for Evolution and Changed the World, Iain McCalman (Viking)
Multimedia History Prize ($15,000)
Bombora: the story of Australian surfing, Paul Clarke, Greg Appel and Nick Carroll (Bombora Films)
A Northern Town, Rachel Landers and Dylan Bowen (Pony Films)
First Australians, Rachel Perkins, Beck Cole, Louis Nowra and Darren Dale (Blackfella Films)
NSW Community and Regional History Prize ($15,000)
Up on the Hill: A History of St Patrick's College, Goulburn, David Bollen (UNSW Press)
'Was thinking of home today...': North Sydney and the Great War, Ian Hoskins (North Sydney Council)
A History of Sydney's Darling Harbour, Wayne Johnson and Roger Parris (Sydney Harbour Foreshore)
Young People's History Prize ($15,000)
Krakatoa Lighthouse, Allan Baillie (Penguin)
Captain Cook's Apprentice, Anthony Hill (Penguin)
The Night We Made the Flag, Carole Wilkinson, illus by Sebastian Ciaffoglone (Black Dog Books)
Lighthouse Girl, Dianne Wolfer, illus by Brian Simmonds (Fremantle Press)
According to Wikipedia: ''The annual Walkley Awards, under the administration of the Walkley Foundation for Journalism, are presented in Australia to recognise and reward excellence in journalism." One of the categories in the awards list is that of Best Non-Fiction Book.
The longlist of books for that award have now been released:
Graham Freudenberg, Churchill and Australia, Pan Macmillian
Peter Hartcher, To The Bitter End, Allen & Unwin
Jenny Hocking, Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History, Melbourne University Press
Mary-Rose MacColl, The Birth Wars, University of Queensland Press
David Marr, The Henson Case, Text Publishing
Iain McCalman, Darwin's Armada, Penguin
Sally Neighbour, The Mother of Mohammed, Melbourne University Press
Matt Peacock, Killer Company, ABC Books
Gerard Ryle, Firepower, Allen & Unwin
Robert Wainwright, The Killing of Caroline Byrne, Allen & Unwin
A shortlist of 3 books will be released on November 9, with the winner announced at the annual Walkley Awards dinner on November 29.
By now you will have heard that Romanian-German author Herta Müller has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. I don't know anything about her which is not overly surprising. I think most readers in the Western world will feel the same way. One weblog that doesn't, and didn't, is The Complete Review which managed to pick the winner in advance.
Pretty fair effort I'd say.
Hilary Mantel's novel, Wolf Hall, was last night named as the winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize. I'm not sure the UK bookie's will be too happy as this novel was the favourite for the award almost since the time it was published. Coetzee's Summertime was probably the other work to be in major contention.
Mantel won from the following shortlisted works:
A.S. Byatt The Children's Book
J.M. Coetzee Summertime
Adam Foulds The Quickening Maze
Hilary Mantell Wolf Hall
Simon Mawer The Glass Room
Sarah Waters The Little Stranger
It's coming near to October which means the announcement of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature is only just around the corner. As is also usual, speculation has begun across the literary and bookmaking world as to the likely names to be announced in Stockholm early next month.
The UK bookmakers, Ladbrokes, is generally across all this and has again released its odds for the 2009 prize. It's choices are:
Other than Murray, Peter Carey is at 66/1 and Malouf at 100/1. In 2008 Les Murray was given odds of 10/1, and in 2007 his odds were 6/1. By comparison Peter Carey was at 40/1 in 2008, and 25/1 in 2007. Looks like they are all slipping. Not sure why.
Apart from Ladbrokes, the best site to check out is the complete review, who actually know who all these people are.
The shortlists for the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Awards have been announced.
From the website: "The Prime Minister's Literary Awards celebrate the contribution of Australian literature to the nation's cultural and intellectual life.
The awards, held annually, recognise literature's importance to our national identity, community and economy. A tax free prize of $100,000 is awarded to the works judged to be of the highest literary merit in each of two categories: fiction and non-fiction."
Fiction
The Pages - Murray Bail (Text Publishing)
People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks (Harper Collins)
Wanting - Richard Flanagan (Random House)
Everything I Knew - Peter Goldsworthy (Penguin Books)
One Foot Wrong - Sofie Laguna (Allen and Unwin)
The Boat - Nam Le (Penguin Books)
The Good Parents - Joan London (Random House)
Non-Fiction
Van Diemen's Land - James Boyce (Black Inc.)
Doing Life: A Biography of Elizabeth Jolley - Brian Dibble (UWA Press)
Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History - Jenny Hocking (Melbourne University Publishing)
The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island - Chloe Hooper (Penguin Books)
House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann - Evelyn Juers (Giramondo)
Drawing the Global Colour Line - Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds (Melbourne University Publishing)
The Henson Case - David Marr (Text Publishing)
American Journeys - Don Watson (Random House)
The winners of these awards will be announced by the end of the year, presumably. I can't find any specific date on the website.
The winners of the 2009 Australian/Vogel Literary Award have been announced.
The joint winners are:
Utopian Man, by Lisa Lang
and
Night Street, by Kristel Thornell
This award is for an unpublished manuscript by an Australian writer under the age of 35. It carries prize-money of $A20,000 (which will be shared this year) and guarantees publication by Allen & Unwin within the next 12 months. Previous winners of the award have included: Tim Winton, Brian Castro, Kate Grenville, Mandy Sayer and Andrew McGahan. I've read a number of the winners and can safely say they were all worth reading.
The finalists for the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature have been announced. You can read further details of the awards here.
| Melbourne Prize for Literature 2009 |
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Best Writing Award 2009 |
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Look Who's Morphing, Giramondo There is also a Civic Choice Award which is basically a Readers' Choice award with the candidates being those on the Best Writing Award list. That award will be announced on 27th November. Presumably the two major awards will also be announced on that date. |
The winners of the 2009 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were announced in Brisbane last night. The winners were:
Fiction Book Award
Wanting by Richard Flanagan, Random House Australia (Knopf)
Non-Fiction Book Award
The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island by Chloe Hooper, Penguin Group (Australia)
Unpublished Indigenous Writer - Arts Queensland David Unaipon Award
The Boundary by Nicole Watson
Film Script - Pacific Film and Television Commission Award
Mary and Max by Adam Elliot, Melodrama Pictures Pty Ltd
Television Script - QUT Creative Industries Award
False Witness by Peter Gawler, Screentime Pty Ltd
Drama Script (Stage) Award
Realism by Paul Galloway, Currency Press
Poetry Collection - Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award
The Striped World by Emma Jones, Faber and Faber
Australian Short Story Collection - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award
The Boat by Nam Le, Penguin Group (Australia)
Children's Book - Mary Ryan's Award
Little Blue by Gaye Chapman, Little Hare Books
Young Adult Book Award
A Small Free Kiss in the Dark by Glenda Millard, Allen & Unwin
Science Writer Award
Pasteur's Gambit: Louis Pasteur, The Australasian Rabbit Plague and a Ten Million Dollar Prize by Stephen Dando-Collins, Random House Australia (Vintage)
History Book - Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland Award
Stella Miles Franklin by Jill Roe, HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate - The Harry Williams Award
Code of Silence by Sarah Ferguson, ABC Four Corners
There was also the "Emerging Queensland Author - Manuscript Award" on the shortlists but which doesn't seem to have been awarded. I can't determine if it was, but the information has not been released, or if none of the manuscripts were considered worthy of the award.
You can read the "Courier-Mail's" response to the awards and the full shortlists.
The shortlisted works for the 2009 Man Booker Prize have been announced.
A.S. Byatt The Children's Book
J.M. Coetzee Summertime
Adam Foulds The Quickening Maze
Hilary Mantell Wolf Hall
Simon Mawer The Glass Room
Sarah Waters The Little Stranger
Australian interest this year rests with J.M. Coetzee who will be vying for his third Man Booker Prize after winning for Life and Times of Michael K. in 1983 and Disgrace in 1999.
The winner of the 2009 prize will be announced on Tuesday 6th October.
You can find the the list of 13 longlisted titles here.
The winner of the 2009 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were announced last night.
The winners are:
Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin)
Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction
The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island - Chloe Hooper (Hamish Hamilton)
C.J. Dennis Prize for Poetry
The Golden Bird - Robert Adamson (Black Inc)
Louis Esson Prize for Drama
Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd - Lally Katz (Malthouse Theatre)
The Prize for Young Adult Fiction
Something in the World Called Love - Sue Saliba (Penguin)
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
Death in the Mountains - Lisa Clifford (Macmillan)
The John Curtin Prize for Journalism
The Penalty is Death: Inside Bali's Kerobokan Prison - Luke Davies (The Monthly)
The Prize for Best Music Theatre Script
Shane Warne The Musical - Eddie Perfect (Token Events)
The Prize for Science Writing
The Rise of Animals: Evolution and Diversification of the Kingdom Animalia - Patricia Vickers-Rich (JHU Press)
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
Sufficient Grace - Amy Espeseth
You can read the full list of the shortlisted works here.
Chloe Hooper, who seems to be winning just about everything this year, has also been awarded the inaugral John Button Prize, for the "best piece of non-fiction writing on politics or public policy in the previous 12 months", for her book, The Tall Man.
You can read the list of works on the shortlist for this award here and on the longlist here.
The 2009 Ned Kelly Awards were presented in Melbourne on Friday night as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival.
The shortlisted works were previously posted here.
The winners of the 2009 Awards were:
Non-Fiction
The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper
First Fiction
Ghostlines by Nick Gadd
Fiction
Deep Water by Peter Corris and
Smoke & Mirrors by Kel Robertson (tie)
S.D. Harvey Award
"Fidget's Farewell" by Scott McDermott
Lifetime Achievement
Shane Maloney
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Yesterday I posted about the 2009 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children's Writing shortlist and today here's the winner: Leanne Hall for her manuscript This is Shyness.
Text Publishing has the official announcement and Readings has a photo of Hall with last year's winner, Richard Newsome, in their Carlton store.
The shorlists for the 2009 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards have been announced.
Fiction Book Award
Wanting by Richard Flanagan, Random House Australia (Knopf)
The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville,Text Publishing
The Boat by Nam Le, Penguin Group (Australia)
Ransom by David Malouf, Random House Australia (Knopf)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, Allen & Unwin
Non-Fiction Book Award
Gough Whitlam by Jenny Hocking, Melbourne University Publishing
The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island by Chloe Hooper, Penguin Group (Australia)
Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists by Vivien Johnson, IAD Press
Shadowed Days by Garry Kinnane, Clouds of Magellan
Manning Clark: A Life by Brian Matthews, Allen & Unwin
Emerging Queensland Author - Manuscript Award
Bone Mother by Pamela S. Douglas
The Knock Knock by Rachel Rutter
Off the Grid by Inga Simpson
Young Liars and Other Stories by Chris Somerville
Unpublished Indigenous Writer - Arts Queensland David Unaipon Award
Which Way? by John Davis
Aprons and Stock-whips by Alfa Emily Geiszler and Maryann Lazarus
Magpies by Jeanine Leane
Only a Bridge by Ngitji Ngitji Mona Tur
The Boundary by Nicole Watson
Film Script - Pacific Film and Television Commission Award
Cedar Boys by Serhat Caradee, Cedar Boys Pty Ltd
Mary and Max by Adam Elliot, Melodrama Pictures Pty Ltd
The Last Ride by Mac Gudgeon, Last Ride Pty Ltd
Mao's Last Dancer by Jan Sardi, Last Dancer Pty Ltd
Television Script - QUT Creative Industries Award
False Witness by Peter Gawler, Screentime Pty Ltd
K9 - Regeneration - Episode 1 by Shane Krause and Shayne Armstrong, Metal Mutt Productions Pty Ltd
East West 101 - Just Cargo - Episode 9 by Michelle Offen, Knapman Wyld Television Pty Ltd
Underbelly - A Tale of Two Cities - Judas Kiss - Episode 9 by Felicity Packard, Screentime Pty Ltd
My Place - 1978 - Mike by Nicholas Parsons, Chapman Pictures Pty Ltd
Drama Script (Stage) Award
Realism by Paul Galloway, Currency Press
Frankenstein by Lally Katz
The Great by Tony McNamara, Currency Press
The Modern International Dead by Damien Millar, Currency Press
The Messenger: The Play by Ross Mueller, Currency Press
Poetry Collection - Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award
Aria by Sarah Holland-Batt, University of Queensland Press
The Striped World by Emma Jones, Faber and Faber
Divine Comedy: Journeys Through a Regional Geography by John Kinsella, University of Queensland Press
The Other Way Out by Bronwyn Lea, Giramondo Publishing
Australian Short Story Collection - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award
Her Father's Daughter by John Clanchy, University of Queensland Press
The Rip by Robert Drewe, Penguin Group (Australia)
The Bird in the Egg and Other Stories by Steve Holden, Ginninderra Press
The Boat by Nam Le, Penguin Group (Australia)
Children's Book - Mary Ryan's Award
Possum and Wattle: My Big Book of Australian Words by Bronwyn Bancroft, Little Hare Books
Little Blue by Gaye Chapman, Little Hare Books
The Camel Who Crossed Australia by Jackie French, HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Darius Bell and the Glitter Pool by Odo Hirsch, Allen & Unwin
Pearl Verses the World by Sally Murphy and Heather Potter, Walker Books Australia
Young Adult Book Award
Into White Silence by Anthony Eaton, Random House Australia
The Beginner's Guide to Living by Lia Hills, Text Publishing
Sprite Downberry by Nette Hilton, HarperCollins Publishers Australia
My Candlelight Novel by Joanne Horniman, Allen & Unwin
A Small Free Kiss in the Dark by Glenda Millard, Allen & Unwin
Science Writer Award
Small Wonders: how microbes rule our world by Idan Ben-Barak, Scribe Publications
Pasteur's Gambit: Louis Pasteur, The Australasian Rabbit Plague and a Ten Million Dollar Prize by Stephen Dando-Collins, Random House Australia (Vintage)
Darwin's Armada by Iain McCalman, Penguin Group (Australia)
Evolution's Edge: The Coming Collapse and Transformation of our World by Graeme Taylor, New Society Publishers
Hendra and the bats by Ian Townsend, ABC Radio National
History Book - Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland Award
The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen by Warwick Anderson, The Johns Hopkins University Press
Churchill and Australia by Graham Freudenberg, Pan Macmillan Australia
Travels in Atomic Sunshine by Robin Gerster, Scribe Publications
Darwin's Armada by Iain McCalman, Penguin Group (Australia)
Stella Miles Franklin by Jill Roe, HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate - The Harry Williams Award
The Drugs Scourge by Michael Crutcher and Matthew Fynes-Clinton, "The Courier-Mail"
Code of Silence by Sarah Ferguson, ABC Four Corners
The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island by Chloe Hooper, Penguin Group (Australia)
Quarterly Essay - Last Drinks: The Impact of the Northern Territory Intervention by Paul Toohey, Black Inc
Crisis for Children by Ian Townsend, ABC Radio National
The winners will be announced at the State Library of Queensland on Tuesday 8th September.
The winners of the 2009 Davitt Awards were announced in Melbourne on August 21st. "The Davitt Awards (named in honour of Ellen Davitt (1812-1879) who wrote Australia's first mystery novel, Force and Fraud in 1865) are presented by the Sisters in Crime Australia association. The awards are presented for Australian crime fiction, by women, for both adults and young adults."
TRUE CRIME
Chloe Hooper, The Tall Man (Penguin Books Australia)
YOUNG ADULT
Catherine Jinks, Genius Squad (Allen & Unwin)
ADULT FICTION
Malla Nunn, A Beautiful Place to Die (PanMacmillan)
READERS CHOICE
Katherine Howell, The Darkest Hour (PanMacmillan)
[Thanks to the AustCrimeFiction weblog for the details.]
Back in June I posted about the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children's Writing sponsored and run by Text Publishing in Melbourne.
What I missed last week was the announcement of the shortlisted works:
Concentrate, The Brothers Groth
This is Shyness, Leanne Hall
Wildfire, Joanne Schoenwald
I Ran Away First, Nicole Trope
The winner was due to be announced yesterday at the Melbourne Writers' Festival.
The winners of "The Age" Book of the Year Awards were announced at the Melbourne Writers' Festival opening event on Friday 21st August.
The winners were:
Fiction
Things We Didn't See Coming - Steven Amsterdam (Sleepers)
Non-Fiction
Down to the Crossroads: On the Trail of the 2008 US Election - Guy Rundle (Penguin)
Poetry
Better than God - Peter Porter (Picador)
Steven Amsterdam also won Book of the Year, which is basically the best of the best. Last weekend I heard that the publishers of Things We Didn't See Coming were rather over-the-moon about the novel's shortlisting. They may not draw a sober breath for a week after this win. And good luck to them. For a small press to pick up a major award such as this with their first published novel says a lot about their publishing nous.
The winners of the 2009 Children's Book Council of Australia Awards have been announced. You can read the full shortlists here.
Book of the Year - Older Readers
Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan (Allen & Unwin)
Honour books:
Into White Silence, Anthony Eaton (Woolshed Press, Random House Australia)
A Rose for the Anzac Boys, Jackie French (HarperCollinsPublishers)
Book of the Year - Younger Readers
Perry Angel's Suitcase, Glenda Millard and illus. Stephen Michael King (ABC Books)
Honour books:
The Wish Pony, Catherine Bateson (Random House Australia)
Then, Morris Gleitzman (Viking, Penguin Group Australia)
Book of the Year - Early Childhood
How to Heal a Broken Wing, Bob Graham (Walker Books)
Honour books:
Leaf, Stephen Michael King (Scholastic Australia)
Tom Tom, Rosemary Sullivan and illus. Dee Huxley (Working Title Press)
Book of the Year - Picture Book
Collecting Colour, Kylie Dunstan (Lothian Children's Books, Hachette)
Honour books:
Home and Away Matt Ottley and text John Marsden (Lothian Children's Books, Hachette)
The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness, Colin Thompson (Random House Australia)
Book of the Year - Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
Alive in the Death Zone, Lincoln Hall (Random House Australia)
Honour books:
The Word Spy, Ursula Dubosarsky and illus.Tohby Riddle (Viking, Penguin Group Australia)
Simpson and his Donkey, Mark Greenwood and illus. Frane Lessac (Walker Books)
The shortlisted works for the 2009 John Button Prize have been announced.
Those works are:
Chloe Hooper: The Tall Man -- Death and Life on Palm Island (Penguin)
Marcia Langton: "The end of `big men' politics" (Griffith Review)
Margot O'Neill: Blind Conscience (UNSW Press)
Geoffrey Robertson: The Statute of Liberty -- How Australians can take back their rights (Vintage Books)
Galarrwuy Yunupingu: "Tradition, Truth and Tomorrow" (The Monthly)
The full longlist can be found here.
The John Button Prize, "created in memory of the late Industry Minister, Senator and writer, awards $20,000 to the best piece of non-fiction writing on politics or public policy in the previous 12 months."
At the other end of the age scale from the John Marsden Prize is the CAL Scribe Fiction Prize, which is sponsored by Scribe Publications and the CAL Cultural Fund. The prize will be awarded to "an unpublished manuscript by an Australian writer over 35. The winner will receive $12,000 and a book contract from Scribe. We are now accepting submissions: the prize is open to any writer over 35, who may or may not have been published before." Entries close on 15 October, and the word count is 40,000 to 120,000 words.
Sort of an anti-"Australian"/Vogel Award, I guess.
George Dunford has written to let me know about the 2009 John Mardsen Prize for Young Writers that is run by "Express Media". According to the website:
Poetry and short story winners under 18 will receive $500 each. 18-24 year olds in first place will gain $2500 for short story and $1000 for poetry.
All first place winners will be printed in the December issue of Voiceworks.
Second and third place winners, and those with honourable mention will be published on the Express Media website.
Entry is now free for all applicants under 18.
And for 18 -24 year olds, the $10 entry fee includes free Express Media Membership plus an exclusive monthly newsletter on events, grants and competitions.
Entries close 5pm Friday 28th August, 2009.
Entry forms are available on the website as well.
The Independent Bookshops in Australia make the Indie Awards each year. As the website says:
Now in its second year, The Indie Book Award is all about Australian independent booksellers showing the strength of their support for Australian authors and celebrating the very best of Australian writing.
Panels of expert judges (all avid readers and indie booksellers) choose winners in the four categories. These four category winners form the shortlist and independent booksellers from across the country then vote to select the best of the best - the top-polling book will be announced as The Indie Book of the Year for 2009. The author of the winning book will receive prize money of $15,000.
The four category winners have now been anounced as follows:
Fiction - Jasper Jones, by Craig Silvey
Debut Fiction - The Virtuoso by Sonia Orchard
Non-Fiction - The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper
Children's Book - Pearl Verses the World by Sally Murphy, illustrated by Heather Potter
The Indie Book of the Year winner will be announced on Monday, September 28
The shortlists for the 2009 Ned Kelly Awards have been announced.
The nominees are:
Best first fiction
Ghostlines, Nick Gadd
Crooked, Camilla Nelson
The Build Up, Phillip Gwynee
Best Fiction
Bright Air, Barry Maitland
Deep Water, Peter Corris
Smoke & Mirrors, Kel Robertson
Best True crime
The Killing of Caroline Byrne, Robert Wainwrights
The Tall Man, Chloe Hooper
A Question of Power, Michelle Schwarz
The SD Harvey Short Story
Fidget's Farewell, Scott McDermott
Farewell My Lovelies, Chris Womersley
Fern's Farwell, Bronwyn Mehan
Farewell to the Shade, Cheryl Rogers
The SD Harvey Short Story category is a new award this year. The details of the award, and SD Harvey are given on The Crime Writers of Australia website. (Seems you have to start your story's title with an "F" to get nominated this year.)
But seriously, the awards will be presented during the Melbourne Writers' Festival, on Friday 28th August at 7:00pm. The venue: Festival Club, Australian Centre for the Moving Image on Flinders Street. The event is free, so be early, find a spot by the bar and make friends with a brew or two. I'll be the ugly one down the back.
The shortlists for the 2009 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted works are:
Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
The Pages - Murray Bail (Text)
Dog Boy - Eva Hornung (Text)
The Boat - Nam Le (Penguin)
The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin)
Breath - Tim Winton (Penguin)
Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction
The City's Outback - Gillian Cowlishaw (UNSW Press)
Arabesques - Robert Dessaix (Picador)
The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island - Chloe Hooper (Hamish Hamilton)
House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroger-Mann - Evelyn Juers (Giramondo)
Darwin's Armada - Iain McCalman (Viking)
C.J. Dennis Prize for Poetry
The Golden Bird - Robert Adamson (Black Inc)
Fishing in the Devonian - Carol Jenkins (Puncher and Wattman)
The Other Way Out - Bronwyn Lea (Giramondo)
Louis Esson Prize for Drama
Realism - Paul Galloway ((Melbourne Theatre Company/Currency Press)
Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd - Lally Katz (Malthouse Theatre)
The Modern International Dead - Damien Millar (Griffin Theatre Company/Currency Press)
The Prize for Young Adult Fiction
The Two Pearls of Wisdom - Alison Goodman (HarperCollins)
The Beginner's Guide to Living - Lia Hills (Text Publishing)
Something in the World Called Love - Sue Saliba (Penguin)
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
Death in the Mountains - Lisa Clifford (Macmillan)
Neither Here Nor There: Italians and Swiss-Italians on the Walhalla Goldfield 1865-1915 - Annamaria Davine (Italian Australian Institute)
And Be Home Before Dark - Roland Rocchiccioli (Hardie Grant Books)
The John Curtin Prize for Journalism
The Guards' Story - Peter Cronau and Quentin McDermott (Four Corners, ABC Television)
The Penalty is Death: Inside Bali's Kerobokan Prison - Luke Davies (The Monthly)
A Week in Kinglake - Michael Vincent (ABC Radio)
The Prize for Best Music Theatre Script
Poor Boy - Matt Cameron and Tim Finn (Melbourne Theatre Company/Currency Press)
Shane Warne The Musical - Eddie Perfect (Token Events)
Metro Street - Matthew Robinson (Arts Asia Pacific, Power Arts and STCSA)
The Prize for Science Writing
Pasteur's Gambit - Stephen Dando-Collins (Vintage)
Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action - David Spratt and Philip Sutton (Scribe)
The Rise of Animals: Evolution and Diversification of the Kingdom Animalia - Patricia Vickers-Rich (JHU Press)
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
Sufficient Grace - Amy Espeseth
Like Being a Wife - Catherine Harris
The Sunlit Zone - Lisa Jacobson
The awards presentation will be held on Tuesday September 1st.
The shortlists for "The Age" Book of the Year Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted works are
Fiction
Things We Didn't See Coming - Steven Amsterdam (Sleepers)
Look Who's Morphing - Tom Cho (Giramondo)
Butterfly - Sonya Hartnett (Hamish Hamilton)
Cooee - Vivienne Kelly (Scribe)
Ransom - David Malouf (Knopf)
Non-Fiction
The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island - Chloe Hooper (Hamish Hamilton)
Darwin's Armada: How Four Voyagers to Australasia won the Battle for Evolution and Changed the World - Iain McCalman (Viking)
The Red Highway - Nicholas Rothwell (Back Inc)
Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History - Jenny Hocling (Miegunyah Press)
Down to the Crossroads: On the Trail of the 2008 US Election - Guy Rundle (Penguin)
Poetry
The Golden Bird - Richard Adamson (Black Inc)
True Thoughts - Pam Brown (Salt Publishing)
Divine Comedy - John Kinsella (University of Queensland Press)
Fire Season - Kate Middleton (Giramondo)
Better than God - Peter Porter (Picador)
The winners of the awards will be announced on Friday August 21st during the Melbourne Writers' Festival.
The nominees for the 2009 World Fantasy Awards have been released. These awards recognise outstanding achievements in the fantasy genre for the 2008 calendar year. They are jury judged in a similar manner to the Nebula Awards, and differ from the reader determined Hugo Awards - the other major awards in the sf and fantasy fields.
This year's awards will be presented at the 2009 World Fantasy Convention which is being held over the weekend of October 29 - November 1 in San Jose, California.
This year the following Australian works have been nominated:
Best Novel: Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
Best Collection: Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan
The 2009 Man Booker Prize Longlist was announced yesterday and there is at least one novel, by Coetzee, that may cause a little consternation amongst some readers. Namely, is it fiction or not? This reminds me a little of Tom Keneally's Schindler's Ark, about which I had long discussions, and a minor "edit war", on Wikipedia.
Anyway, the longlist comprises:
I haven't paid as much attention to the possible entries on this list as I have in the past, so I can't give you any thoughts on a possible shortlist, let alone a winner. "The Times" ponders the omissions - Atwood, Keneally, Banville - and indicates that the bookies are tipping Coetzee.
Back in April we reported that a new literary prize had been announced. That prize aimed to honour the memory of John Button, ex-politician and writer, who died last year. We can now report that the longlisted works for the 2009 John Button Prize have now been released:
Articles and Essays
Robyn Archer - "Industry that pays, and art that doesn't"
Don Watson - "Once upon a time in America"
Galarrwuy Yunupingu - "Tradition, truth and tomorrow"
Geoff Russell - "J'acccuse.... CSIRO"
Marcia Langton - "The end of big men politics"
Michael Fullilove - "Hope or glory? The Presidential election, foreign policy and Australia"
Laura Tingle - "On our selection"
David Heatherington - "Reimagining the Australian settlement"
Annabel Crabb - "Stop at nothing: The life and adventures of Malcolm Turnbull"
Kate Jennings - "American revolution"
Tim Flannery - "Now or never"
Paul Toohey - "Last drinks"
Guy Pearse - "Quarry vision"
Books
Peter Hartcher - To the Bitter End
Peter Van Onselen and Philip Senior - Howard's End: The Unravelling of a Government
Sarah Maddison - Black Politics
Geoffrey Robertson - The Statue of Liberty
Paula Shaw - Seven Seasons in Aurukun
Chloe Hooper - The Tall Man
Peter Singer - The Life You Can Save
Michelle Schwarz - A Question of Power
Quentin Beresford - The Godfather
Mark Davis - The Land of Plenty
Greg Buckman - Tasmania's Wilderness Battles
David Marr - The Henson Case
Ben McNeil - The Clean Industrial Revolution
Geoff Boucher and Matthew Sharpe - The Times Will Suit Them
Andrew Scott - Politics, Parties and Issues in Australia: An Introduction
Gideon Haigh - The Racket: How Abortion Became Illegal in Australia
Margot O'Neil - Blind Conscience
Tony Taylor - Denial
The existence of a longlist leads me to believe that a shortlist will also be announced at some time, but I can't find out when. In any event the winner will be announced at the inaugural John Button Lecture at the Melbourne Writers Festival on August 28th.
The Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for 2008 has been awarded to The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.
The society's website has a detailed judges' report on the novel.
The shortlisted works were:
Divine Comedy: Journeys through a regional geography. John Kinsella (UQP)
Her Father's Daughter. John Clanchy (UQP)
House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann. Evelyn Juers (Giramondo)
Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw. Chris Wallace-Crabbe (Carcenet Press)
The Slap. Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin)
The Spare Room. Helen Garner (Text)
The winners of the 2008 Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History have been announced.
As in 2007 two winners were chosen:
Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica by Tom Giffiths
The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathanael Pepper and the Ruptured World by Robert Kenny
The winners of the 2009 Australian Book Industry Awards were announced in Sydney last night. The winners were:
Independent Bookseller of the Year
VIC - Readings Books Music Film Carlton
Bookseller Marketing Campaign of the Year
Readings Books Music Film Carlton, for The Boat by Nam Le
Book of the Year
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin)
Newcomer of the Year (debut writer)
The Boat by Nam Le (Penguin Australia)
Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2009
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin)
General Fiction Book of the Year
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton (Allen & Unwin)
Book of the Year for Older Children (age range 8 to 14 years)
Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta (Penguin Australia)
Book of the Year for Younger Children (age range 0 to 8 years)
Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes written by Mem Fox, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (Penguin Australia)
General Non-Fiction Book of the Year
The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper (Penguin Australia)
Biography of the Year
The Lucy Family Alphabet by Judith Lucy (Penguin Australia)
Illustrated Book of the Year
Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan (Allen & Unwin)
International Success of the Year
Penguin Australia, for various Sonya Hartnett titles
Marketing Campaign of the Year
Penguin Australia, for Popular Penguins by various authors
Distributor of the Year
United Book Distributors
Publisher of the Year
Penguin Australia
Small Publisher of the Year
Black Inc.
You can read the full shortlists here.
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.
Text Publishing have opened their "Prize for Young Adult & Children's Writing" for 2009 - actually the prize was open for submissions from May 4, but some of us are a bit slow of the mark. The prize is worth $10,000 and a contract to publish the work with Text Publishing. Submissions close on July 31 with the winner to be announced during the Melbourne Writers' Festival, during the last week of August 2009. Full details of submission criteria are available from the publisher [PDF file].
Meanjin magazine has announced the formation of the Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize to be awarded to the best poem published in the magazine during a given year. Named in honour of the author of such works as The Monkey's Mask and El Dorado, the prize will be judged by Andrea Goldsmith and Kristin Henry and announced in December issue of the magazine.
With the winner of the 2009 Miles Franklin Award to be announced on Thursday, Jason Steger takes a look at the contenders in "The Age".
The shortlist comprises:
The Pages by Murray Bail
Wanting by Richard Flanagan
Ice by Louis Nowra
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Breath by Tim Winton
My tip is, and has been for a few months now, The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, though I wouldn't be too surprised if Tim Winton picked up another Miles gong.
The winners of the 2009 Kibble and Dobbie Awards have been announced as follows:
Kibble Award: An Exacting Heart: The Story Of Hephzibah Menuhin by Jacqueline Kent
Dobbie Award: Fugitive Blue by Claire Thomas
You can read the shortlists for both awards here.
The 2009 Ditmar Awards - Australian sf and fantasy awards as voted by readers - were announced at Conjecture, the Australian National Science Fictoon Convention, over the weekend. The winners were:
William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism and Review
Kim Wilkins, "Popular genres and the Australian literary community: the case of fantasy fiction" in the Journal of Australian Studies
Best New Talent
Felicity Dowker
Best Professional Achievement
Angela Challis, for Black, the Australian Dark Culture Magazine
Best Fan Production
ASif!, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Gene Melzack
Best Fan Artist
Cat Sparks for Scary Food Cookbook
Best Fan Writer
Rob Hood, for Undead Backbrain
Best Professional Artwork
Shaun Tan, for Tales from Outer Suburbia
Best Collected Work
Dreaming Again, edited by Jack Dann
Best Short Story
Tie between Margo Lanagan "The Goosle" and Dirk Flinthart "This is not my story" (ASIM #37)
Best Novella/Novelette
"Painlessness" by Kirstyn McDermott
Best Novel
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
In addition the following two awards were presented
Peter McNamara Award
Sean Williams
A. Bertram Chandler Award
Rosaleen Love
The shortlists for the 2009 Australian Book Industry Awards have been released. The winners will be announced in Sydney on 23 June 2009.
Independent Bookseller of the Year
NSW/ACT - Gleebooks
Qld - Riverbend Books & Teahouse
SA/NT - Imprints Booksellers
Tas - Fullers Bookshop Hobart
VIC - Readings Books Music Film Carlton
WA - Bookcaffe
Bookseller Marketing Campaign of the Year
Avid Reader, for Growing Up Asian in Australia by Alice Pung
Avid Reader, for Wild Tea Cosies by Loani Prior
Pages & Pages Booksellers Mosman, for The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
Readings Books Music Film Carlton, for The Boat by Nam Le
Robinson's Bookshop, for Brisingr by Christopher Paolini
Book of the Year
Breath by Tim Winton (Penguin Australia)
Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan (Allen & Unwin)
The Boat by Nam Le (Penguin Australia)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin)
The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper (Penguin Australia)
Newcomer of the Year (debut writer)
A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn (Macmillan Publishers Australia)
I Dream of Magda by Stefan Laszczuk (Allen & Unwin)
Never Say Die by Chris O'Brien (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
The Boat by Nam Le (Penguin Australia)
The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow by A.J. Mackinnon (Black Inc.)
Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2009
Breath by Tim Winton (Penguin Australia)
The Boat by Nam Le (Penguin Australia)
The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville (The Text Publishing Company)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin)
The Spare Room by Helen Garner (The Text Publishing Company)
General Fiction Book of the Year
A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn (Macmillan Publishers Australia)
All Together Now by Monica McInerney (Penguin Australia)
How To Break Your Own Heart by Maggie Alderson (Penguin Australia)
The Build Up by Phillip Gwynne (Macmillan Publishers Australia)
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton (Allen & Unwin)
Book of the Year for Older Children (age range 8 to 14 years)
A Rose for the ANZAC Boys by Jackie French (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
Dragon Dawn by Carole Wilkinson (Black Dog Books)
Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta (Penguin Australia)
Home and Away by John Marsden, illustrated by Matt Ottley (Hachette Australia)
Pip: The Story of Olive by Kim Kane (Allen & Unwin)
Book of the Year for Younger Children (age range 0 to 8 years)
Enigma written & illustrated by Graeme Base (Penguin Australia)
Possum and Wattle: My Big Book of Australian Words written & illustrated by Bronwyn Bancroft, (Little Hare Books)
Sunday Chutney written & illustrated by Aaron Blabey (Penguin Australia)
Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes written by Mem Fox, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (Penguin Australia)
The Dog on the Tuckerbox written by Corinne Fenton, illustrated by Peter Couldthorpe, (Black Dog Books)
General Non-Fiction Book of the Year
1788 by David Hill (Random House Australia)
Life in His Hands by Susan Wyndham (Macmillan Publishers Australia)
The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper (Penguin Australia)
The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow by A.J. Mackinnon (Black Inc.)
What's Happening to Our Girls by Maggie Hamilton (Penguin Australia)
Biography of the Year
I am Melba by Ann Blainey (Black Inc.)
Never Say Die by Chris O'Brien (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography by Jill Roe (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
The Lucy Family Alphabet by Judith Lucy (Penguin Australia)
The Man Who Owns the News by Michael Wolff (Random House Australia)
Illustrated Book of the Year
A Brush with Birds by Penny Olsen (National Library of Australia)
Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan (Allen & Unwin)
The Artist's Lunch by Alice McCormick & Sarah Rhodes, (Murdoch Books)
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Michel Streich (Allen & Unwin)
Utopia: the Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye edited by Margo Neale (National Museum of Australia)
International Success of the Year
HarperCollins Publishers, for Hammer of God by Karen Miller
Penguin Australia, for various Sonya Hartnett titles
Random House Australia, for The Floods by Colin Thompson
The Text Publishing Company, for The Spare Room by Helen Garner
The Text Publishing Company, for Addition by Toni Jordan
Marketing Campaign of the Year
Allen & Unwin, for Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult
Allen & Unwin, for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
Penguin Australia, for Breath by Tim Winton
Penguin Australia, for Popular Penguins by various authors
Random House Australia, for Occy by Mark Occhilupo & Tim Baker
Distributor of the Year
Alliance Distribution Services
Harper Entertainment Distribution Services
Hinkler Books
Random House Australia
United Book Distributors
Publisher of the Year
Allen & Unwin
Hachette Australia
Penguin Australia
Random House Australia
The Text Publishing Company
Small Publisher of the Year
Black Dog Books
Black Inc.
Giramondo Publishing Company
University of Queensland Press
Wakefield Press
A couple of Australian literary awards slipped under the radar over the past month; I put it down to just trying to keep the weblog afloat. Anyway, the shortlists for the 2009 Nita Kibble and Dobbie Encouragement Awards have been released.
"The Nita Kibble Literary Award is an annual literary prize for the best Australian book of fiction or nonfiction classifiable as 'life writing' for Australian women writers." (Wikipedia) The shortlisted works are:
Births Deaths and Marriages: true tales - Georgia Blain
An Exacting Heart: the story of Hephzibah Menuhin - Jacqueline Kent
The After Life: a memoir - Kathleen Stewart
The Dobbie Encouragement Award is for a first work by a female writer, and the shortlists works are:
Arthur Boyd: a life - Darleen Bunjey
Addition - Toni Jordan
Fugitive Blue - Clare Thomas
The winners of both awards will be announced on Wednesday 3 June 2009.
The winners of the 2009 NSW Premier's Literary Awards were announced in Sydney last night.
The winners were:
The Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
Joan London - The Good Parents
The Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction
Chloe Hooper - The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island
The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
LK Holt - Man Wolf Man
The Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature
Michelle Cooper - A Brief History of Montmaray
The Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature
Urusla Dubosarsky & Tohby Riddle (Illustrator) - The Word Spy
The Community Relations Commission Award
Eric Richards - Destination Australia: Migration to Australia Since 1901
The Gleebooks Prize
David Love - Unfinished Business: Paul Keating's Interrupted Revolution J
The UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing
Nam Le - The Boat
The Play Award
Daniel Keene - "The Serpent's Teeth"
The Script Writing Award
Louis Nowra and Rachel Perkins and Beck Cole - "First Australians"
NSW Premier's Translation Prize and PEN Medallion
David Colmer
The full shortlists for each award are available here.
In addition, The Boat by Nam Le was named Book of the Year, and the People's Choice Award for Fiction went to A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz.
Christos Tsiolkas has been announced as the winner of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Best Book Prize for The Slap. Mohammed Hanif was awared the Best First Book Prize for his novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes. This year's prize-giving ceremony was held at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival in New Zealand on Saturday May 16th.
The overall winners of the main prizes - Best Book and Best First Book - are chosen from the winners of these categories from each of the commonwealth regions. You can see the full list of shortlisted titles in each region here.
Each three years the Melbourne Prize cycles through its main categories of Urban Sculpture, Literature and Music. 2009 is the turn of Literature and entries for the prize are now open.
You might recall that in 2006 the main prize was won by Helen Garner, with Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas winning the Best Writing Award.
This year the judges have added a Civic Choice Award to the other two. This is an award that will be voted on by the general public after the accouncement of the Best Writing Award finalists. That announcement will take place on or about 8 November.
The judging panel for the two major awards consists of: Hilary McPhee, Brian Matthews and Mark Rubbo.
Criteria for the Melbourne Prize: "The Melbourne Prize for Literature 2009 is for a Victoian author whose body of published/produced work has made an outstanding contribution Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life. The author's work can include all genres and forms for example, fiction, non-fiction, essays, plays, screenplays and poetry."
Criteria for the Best Writing Award: "The Best Writing Award 2009 is for a piece of published or produced work of outstanding clarity, originality and creativity by a Victorian writer, 40 years or under. The work can be any genre or form for example, fiction, non-fiction, esays, plays, screenplays and poetry."
The finalists for the 2009 Locus Awards have been released. "Locus" magazine refers to itself as the newspaper of the sf and fantasy genres and runs these readers' polls each year. Their coverage is pretty comprehensive and the number of votes for the awards appears to be growing each year.
Australians among the finalists:
Young-Adult Novel
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan
Anthology
Eclipse Two, Jonathan Strahan, ed.
The Starry Rift, Jonathan Strahan, ed.
Editor
Jonathan Strahan
Artist
Shaun Tan
Non-Fiction/Art Book
Tales From Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan
The winners will be announced over the weekend of June 26-27, 2009 in Seattle.
The shortlisted works for the 2009 Miles Franklin Award have been announced.
The shortlist comprises:
The Pages by Murray Bail
Wanting by Richard Flanagan
Ice by Louis Nowra
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Breath by Tim Winton
The winner will be announced on June 18. First thing that strikes me is the lack of women writers on the list. And have no fear, this will be commented upon over the next few days.
The shortlisted works for the 2009 Miles Franklin Award are announced tomorrow. You may recall that at the time the longlist of ten novels was announced in March I mentioned that I had a little side bet running with Kerryn Goldsworthy of the "Still Life with Cat" weblog regarding who could get closest to the mark at each of the award's three levels: longlist, shortlist and winner. I got beaten 6-4 at the longlist stage and hope to do better this time round. Well, I have to really. Otherwise I'm out in straight sets. Be aware, though, that Kerryn, as an ex-Miles Frank Award judge, has what might be termed a "home-ground" advantage here.
In case you've forgotten, here are the longlisted novels:
Addition Toni Jordan, Text Publishing
A Fraction of the Whole Steve Toltz, Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Books)
Breath Tim Winton, Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Books)
fugative blue Claire Thomas, Allen & Unwin
Ice Louis Nowra, Allen & Unwin
one foot wrong Sofie Laguna, Allen & Unwin
The Devil's Eye Ian Townsend, Fourth Estate (HarperCollinsPublishers Australia
The Pages Murray Bail, Text Publishing
The Slap Christos Tsiolkas, Allen & Unwin
Wanting Richard Flanagan, Knopf (Random House Australia)
And here's my choice of the six to appear on the shortlist:
A Fraction of the Whole Steve Toltz, Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Books)
Breath Tim Winton, Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Books)
fugative blue Claire Thomas, Allen & Unwin
The Pages Murray Bail, Text Publishing
The Slap Christos Tsiolkas, Allen & Unwin
Wanting Richard Flanagan, Knopf (Random House Australia)
I can't say I'm overly confident with this lot. No fault of the books but the lack of women authors on my list is very worrying. Oh, for a Garner or a London now.
The shortlists for the 2009 Children's Book Council of Australia Awards have been announced. The winners of these awards will be announced on 21 August - yes, nearly five months off.
Book of the Year - Older Readers
Monster Blood Tattoo Book Two: Lamplighter, D.M. Cornish (Omnibus Books, Scholastic Australia)
Into White Silence, Anthony Eaton (Woolshed Press, Random House Australia)
A Rose for the Anzac Boys, Jackie French (HarperCollinsPublishers)
Finnikin of the Rock, Melina Marchetta (Viking, Penguin Group Australia)
Kill the Possum, James Maloney (Penguin Group Australia)
Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan (Allen & Unwin)
Book of the Year - Younger Readers
The Wish Pony Woolshed Press, Catherine Bateson (Random House Australia
Polar Boy, Sandy Fussell (Walker Books)
Then, Morris Gleitzman (Viking, Penguin Group Australia)
Audrey of the Outback, Chrsitine Harris and illus. Ann James (Little Hare Books)
Perry Angel's Suitcase, Glenda Millard and illus. Stephen Michael King (ABC Books)
The Wizard of Rondo, Emily Rodda (Omnibus Books, Scholastic Australia)
Book of the Year - Early Childhood
How to Heal a Broken Wing, Bob Graham (Walker Books)
Leaf, Stephen Michael King (Scholastic Australia)
Special Kev, Chris McKimmie (Allen & Unwin)
Applesauce and the Christmas Miracle, Glenda Millard and illus. Stephen Michael King (ABC Books)
Tom Tom, Rosemary Sullivan and illus. Dee Huxley (Working Title Press)
Puffling, Margaret Wild and illus. Julie Vivas (Omnibus Books, Scholastic Australia)
Book of the Year - Picture Book
Sunday Chutney, Aaron Blabey (Viking, Penguin Group Australia)
Collecting Colour, Kylie Dunstan (Lothian Children's Books, Hachette)
Home and Away Matt Ottley and text John Marsden (Lothian Children's Books, Hachette)
Nobody Owns the Moon, Tohby Riddle (Viking, Penguin Group Australia)
Captain Congo and the Crocodile King Greg Holfeld and text Ruth Starke (Working Title Press)
The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness, Colin Thompson (Random House Australia)
Book of the Year - Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
The Word Spy, Ursula Dubosarsky and illus.Tohby Riddle (Viking, Penguin Group Australia)
Simpson and his Donkey, Mark Greenwood and illus. Frane Lessac (Walker Books)
Alive in the Death Zone, Lincoln Hall (Random House Australia)
Chicken: the Story of Chicken in Australia, Catriona Nicholls and Janet Paterson and illus. Rod Waller (Kondinin Group)
Tuart Dwellers, Jan Ramage and illus. Ellen Hickman (Department of Environment and Conservation, WA)
Every Picture Tells a Story: Adventures in Australian Art, John Ross and Anna Booth (Craftsman House, Thames & Hudson, Australia)
I am Melba by Ann Blainey has been named the winner of the 2009 National Biography Award.
The shortlisted works were:
I am Melba by Ann Blainey (Black Inc.)
Arthur Blackburn VC: An Australian Hero, His Men, and Their Two World Wars by Andrew Faulkner (Wakefield Press)
The Bone Man of Kokoda by Charles Happell (Macmillan)
The Flower Hunter: the Remarkable Life of Ellis Rowan by Christine and Michael Morton-Evans (S&S)
Desert Queen: The Many Lives and Loves of Daisy Bates by Susanna De Vries (HarperCollins)
Tom Wills: His Spectacular Rise and Fall by Greg de Moore (Allen & Unwin)
Although there isn't anything yet on the Australian Society of Authors website (not even the shortlist unfortunately), Rosemary Sorenson of "The Australian" newspaper announced on Saturday that the winner of the 2009 Barbara Jefferis Award is The Spare Room by Helen Garner.
The shortlisted works were:
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks(HarperCollins)
The Spare Room by Helen Garner (Text)
The Lifeboat by Zacharey Jane (University of Queensland Press)
Addition by Toni Jordan (Text)
The Good Parents by Joan London (Random House)
The Last Sky by Alice Nelson (Fremantle Press)
The shortlists for the 2009 NSW Premier's Literary Awards have been released. The winners will be announced by the NSW Premier on Tuesday 18 May.
The Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
Helen Garner - The Spare Room
Kate Grenville - The Lieutenant
Julia Leigh - Disquiet
Joan London - The Good Parents
Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole
Tim Winton - Breath
The Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction
James Boyce - Van Diemen's Land
Robert Gray - The Land I Came Through Last
Chloe Hooper - The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island
Dmetri Kakmi - Mother Land
Jacqueline Kent - An Exacting Heart: The Story of Hephzibah Menuhin
Christina Thompson - Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
Michael Brennan - Unanimous Night
David Brooks - The Balcony
Sarah Holland-Batt - Aria
LK Holt - Man Wolf Man
Kerry Leves - A Shrine to Lata Mangeshkar
Alan Wearne - The Australian Popular Songbook
The Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature
Dianne Bates - Crossing the Line
Michelle Cooper - A Brief History of Montmaray
D.M Cornish - Monster Blood Tattoo Book Two: Lamplighter
Alison Goodman - The Two Pearls of Wisdom
Nette Hilton - Sprite Downberry
Joanne Horrniman - My Candlelight Novel
The Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature
Urusla Dubosarsky & Tohby Riddle (Illustrator) - The Word Spy
Bob Graham - How to Heal a Broken Wing
Sonya Hartnett and Ann James (Illustrator) - Sadie and Ratz
Glenda Millard and Stephen Michael King (Illustrator) - Perry Angel's Suitcase
Tohby Riddle - Nobody Owns the Moon
Shaun Tan - Tales from Outer Suburbia
The Community Relations Commission Award
Anna Haebich - Spinning the Dream: assimilation in Australia 1950 - 1970
Philip Jones and Anna Kenny - Australia's Muslim Cameleers: Pioneers of the Inland 1860-1930s
Jacqueline Kent - An Exacting Heart: the Story of Hephzibah Menuhin
Michelle Offen - East West 101: Chapter 5 - Haunted by the Past
Malcolm Prentis - The Scots in Australia
Eric Richards - Destination Australia: Migration to Australia Since 1901
The Gleebooks Prize
James Boyce - Van Diemen's Land
Tim Flannery - Quarterly Essay 31: Now or Never, a Sustainable Future for Australia? Gideon Haigh - The Racket: How Abortion became Legal in Australia
Chloe Hooper - The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island
David Love - Unfinished Business: Paul Keating's Interrupted Revolution Jonathan Richards - The Secret War: a true history of Queensland's Native Police
The UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing
The winner of the UTS Glenda Adams Award is chosen from entries submitted for the Christina Stead Prize. There is no shortlist for this award.
The Play Award
Andrew Bovell - "When the Rain Stops Falling"
Brendan Cowell - "Ruben Guthrie"
Tom Holloway - "Don't Say the Words"
Daniel Keene - "The Serpent's Teeth"
Damien Millar - "The Modern International Dead"
Tom Wright - "The Women of Troy"
The Script Writing Award
David Caesar - "Prime Mover"
Greg Haddrick, Felicity Packard & Peter Gawler -"Underbelly: Series 1"
Anna-Maria Monticelli - "Disgrace"
Sean Nash - "All Saints Episode 447: Not What You'd Expect"
Louis Nowra and Rachel Perkins and Beck Cole - "First Australians"
NSW Premier's Translation Prize and PEN Medallion
Harry Aveling
David Colmer
Alison Entrekin
Simon Patton
Kevin Windle
In addition to the above categories, the judges will pick a Book of the Year, which is basically the best of the categories winners. There is also a People's Choice award. This is open to the public to vote on their choice of Best Fiction from the titles submitted for the Christina Stead Prize. Voting is only open to NSW residents, and will end on May 11.
The Judges' List of contenders for the 2009 Man Booker International Prize have been announced. "The Man Booker International Prize differs from the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that it highlights one writer's continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. It is awarded every two years." This year 14 authors from 12 different countries have been included on the list: seven of the authors are writers in translation.
The authors are:
Peter Carey (Australia)
Evan S. Connell (USA)
Mahasweta Devi (India)
E.L. Doctorow (USA)
James Kelman (UK)
Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
Arnošt Lustig (Czechoslovakia)
Alice Munro (Canada)
V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad/India)
Joyce Carol Oates (USA)
Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
Ngugi Wa Thiong'O (Kenya)
Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia)
Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia)
The winner will be announced in May 2009.
The longlist for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction has been announced, with a couple of Australian novels making an appearance. This prize is "awarded annually for the best original full-length novel by a female author of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK in the preceding year." (Wikipedia)
The Household Guide to Dying by Debra Adelaide
The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser
The shortlist will appear on 21 April, with the winner announced on 3 June.
The Australian Horror Writers Association has announced that "The Claws of Native Ghosts" by Lee Battersby has won 2008 Australian Shadows Award. This award is "presented by the AHWA and judged on the overall effect - the skill, delivery, and lasting resonance - of a work of horror fiction written or edited by an Australian and published either in Australia or overseas." Gary Kemble interviewed the author for the ABC's weblog "Articulate".
Q. There's been a lot of talk about a renaissance in Australian horror writing - what's your take on this? Is it all hot air or are Australian horror writers making their presence felt on the world scene?Australian horror is very vibrant within the Australian speculative fiction scene right now, but any writer who limits themself to one form of expression is tying their fortunes to the whims of the marketplace. Five years ago, horror was destitute as an art form, and it might be again in another five. I enjoy writing darker stories, because I'm a cynical curmudgeonly old pessimist who tortures kittens and puppies of an evening, and I'm glad to see a plethora of markets for my work, but I have other sides to my writing, and most successful writers of my acquaintance can say the same (maybe not the torturing kittens bit...).
There are a lot of Australian writers being noticed internationally, but there have been for ages - Garth Nix isn't a horror writer, nor is Sean Williams, Sara Douglass, Sean Tan, or John Birmingham, and they've all been walking the big stage for a good number of years. Quality rises, that's the only real rule. We have some brilliant dark writers working in this country, from Terry Dowling (who's been internationally noticed forever), through Brett McBean, Rick Kennett, Paul Haines, and any number more that you could care to name. If they're still producing brilliant work, at an international level, in 10 years time, then we should start talking about a golden age of horror. Not just yet. Right now it's just a damn good playground to play in.
The shortlist for the 2009 National Biography Award has been announced.
The shortlisted works are:
I am Melba by Ann Blainey (Black Inc.)
Arthur Blackburn VC: An Australian Hero, His Men, and Their Two World Wars by Andrew Faulkner (Wakefield Press)
The Bone Man of Kokoda by Charles Happell (Macmillan)
The Flower Hunter: the Remarkable Life of Ellis Rowan by Christine and Michael Morton-Evans (S&S)
Desert Queen: The Many Lives and Loves of Daisy Bates by Susanna De Vries (HarperCollins)
Tom Wills: His Spectacular Rise and Fall by Greg de Moore (Allen & Unwin)
The award is judged by Louis Nowra, David Headon and Michael McGirr. The winner will be announced at 11am, Monday 30 March at the State Library of NSW.
Susan Wyndham, of "The Sydney Morning Herald", has announced that the shortlisted works for the 2009 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal have been released.
The shortlist is as follows:
Her Father's Daughter by John Clanchy (UQP)
The Spare Room by Helen Garner (Text)
House of Exile by Evelyn Juers (Giramondo)
Divine Comedy: Journeys through a Regional Geography by John Kinsella (UQP)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin)
Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw by Chris Wallace Crabbe (Carcenet)
No word at this time as to when the winner will be announced. You can see the list of previous winners on Wikipedia.
The actual 2009 Miles Franklin Award Longlist of novels has now been announced. This is the real deal, not to be confused with those lists of "possibles" I've been toying with over the past day or so.
Addition Toni Jordan, Text Publishing
A Fraction of the Whole Steve Toltz, Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Books)
Breath Tim Winton, Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Books)
fugative blue Claire Thomas, Allen & Unwin
Ice Louis Nowra, Allen &Unwin
one foot wrong Sofie Laguna, Allen & Unwin
The Devil's Eye Ian Townsend, Fourth Estate (HarperCollinsPublishers Australia)
The Pages Murray Bail, Text Publishing
The Slap Christos Tsiolkas, Allen & Unwin
Wanting Richard Flanagan, Knopf (Random House Australia)
Of my original list of 22 possibles, I missed the books by Thomas and Laguna. However, of my suggested longlist of 12 I only picked four of the final selection. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing but I foolishly challenged Kerryn Goldsworthy - who blogs over at "Still Life with Cat" - to see who would pick the most. I had a bottle of wine on the outcome, as well as a bottle on each of the next two levels - the shortlist and the winner. If you're interested in watching a slow train wreck of confidence then I suggest you check out Kerryn's original selection, and the follow-up. It's in the comments sections that all the action takes place.
So it's Goldsworthy: 1, Middlemiss: 0. Two sets left. Excuse me, have to go limber up.
The shortlist will be released on 16 April.
The regional winners of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize have been announced.
In the South East Asia and the Pacific region (which includes Australia) the winner of the Best Book was The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, and the winner of the Best First Book was The Year of The Shanghai Shark by Mo Zhi Hong of New Zealand.
You can see the full list of shortlisted titles in each region here. The overall winner of the Best Book and Best First Book
prizes (chosen from the winners in each region) will be announced in May 2009.
I really should not have been surprised, over the past few years, that Kerryn Goldsworthy (current book reviewer for "the Sydney Morning Herald" and ex-Miles Franklin Award judge) should have been able to predict the shortlist and then, later, the winner of the award. She reads many more of the possible nominees that I ever could, and she has the added advantage of being aware what the judges look for: insider knowledge no less. This year she's gone one further by taking my list of longlist possibles, then picking the full longlist of between ten and twelve, a shortlist of six and then a winner. Not being one to pass up such a challenge here's my longlist:
The Household Guide to Dying by Debra Adelaide
His Illegal Self by Peter Carey
Wanting by Richard Flanagan
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
Everything I Knew by Peter Goldsworthy
The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville
The Steele Diaries by Wendy James
Life in Seven Mistakes by Susan Johnson
Addition by Toni Jordan
The Good Parents by Joan London
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Breath by Tim Winton
My shortlist:
The Household Guide to Dying by Debra Adelaide
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
Life in Seven Mistakes by Susan Johnson
The Good Parents by Joan London
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Breath by Tim Winton
And my winner: The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Now I'd be quite willing to bet Kerryn a bottle of red on each part of this award process, with the proviso that we can re-set our choices for shortlist and winner after the longlist is announced. Trouble is, I know I'm going to get soundly beaten.
The longlist of novels for the 2009 Miles Franklin award will be announced on 12 March (tomorrow) by the trustees of the prize. As I have produced in the past, here is a list of possible inclusions on that list:
The Household Guide to Dying by Debra Adelaide
The Pages by Murray Bail
His Illegal Self by Peter Carey
The Biographer by Virginia Duigan
Wanting by Richard Flanagan
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
Everything I Knew by Peter Goldsworthy
The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville
The Steele Diaries by Wendy James
The Lifeboat by Zacharey Jane
Life in Seven Mistakes by Susan Johnson
Addition by Toni Jordan
The Good Parents by Joan London
Deception by Michael Meehan
The Last Sky by Alice Nelson
Ice by Louis Nowra
The Landscape of Desire by Kevin Rabelais
The Shallow End by Ashley Sievwright
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
The Devil's Eye by Ian Townsend
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Breath by Tim Winton
Any others you can think of?
As we head into the 2009 Australian literature award year, I thought it interesting to put together a table of the major award winners, for literary fiction, from 2008. I don't intend to draw any conclusions from this, but you should feel free to do so.
| Award | Author | Title | Publisher |
| ABC Fiction Award | Kain Massin | God for the Killing | ABC Books |
| The Age Book of the Year | Tim Winton | Breath | Hamish Hamilton |
| ALS Gold Medal | Michelle de Kretser | The Lost Dog | Allen & Unwin |
| Australia-Asia Literary Award | David Malouf | The Complete Stories | Knopf |
| The Australian/Vogel Literary Award | Andrew Cromme | Document Z | (manuscript) |
| Colin Roderick Award | Malcolm Knox | Jamaica | Allen & Unwin |
| Barbara Jefferis Award | Rhyll McMaster | Feather Man | Brandl and Schlesinger |
| Miles Franklin Award | Steven Carroll | The Time We Have Taken | HarperCollins |
| Nita Kibble Literary Award | Carol Lefevre | Nights in the Asylum | Vintage Books |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards | Michelle de Kretser | The Lost Dog | Allen & Unwin |
| Prime Minister's Literary Award | Steven Conte | The Zookeeper's War | Fourth Estate |
| Queensland Premier's Literary Awards | Helen Garner | The Spare Room | Text Publishing |
| South Australian Premier's Awards | Roger McDonald | The Ballad of Desmond Kale | Vintage Books |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards | Helen Garner | The Spare Room | Text Publishing |
| Western Australian Premier's Book Awards | Stephen Scourfield | Other Country | Allen & Unwin |
Update: I left out a few awards which I have now added in.
The weblog of "Australian Literary Review", "A Pair of Ragged Claws", has announced that the shortlist for the 2009 Barbara Jefferis Award has been released. This award, which was first presented in 2008 to Feather Man by Rhyll McMaster, is presented to "the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society".
The shortlisted works are:
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks(HarperCollins)
The Spare Room by Helen Garner (Text)
The Lifeboat by Zacharey Jane (University of Queensland Press)
Addition by Toni Jordan (Text)
The Good Parents by Joan London (Random House)
The Last Sky by Alice Nelson (Fremantle Press)
The winner will be announced on Friday March 27.
The shortlists for the 2009 Nebula Awards have been announced. These awards are presented each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America across the categories of Novel (40,000 words or more), Novella (17,500 to 40,000 words), Novelette (7,500 to 17,500 words), Short Story (under 7,500 words) and Script (for a movie, TV or radio show, or a play). While it isn't actually a Nebula Award, the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy is presented at the same ceremony as the main awards. In 2009, Monster Blood Tattoo: Lamplighter by D.M. Cornish has been nominated for this award. You might remember that Justine Larbalestier won the Norton back in 2007 for her novel Magic or Madness.
The shortlists for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize have been announced. Books are shortlisted in the categories of Best Book and Best First Book in each of four different regions: Africa, Canada and Caribbean, Europe and South Asia, and South East Asia and the Pacific (Australia fits into the last of these regions). Winners for each category for each region are announced in March 2009, and then the overall winners in each category (chosen from the regional winners) will be announced in May 2009.
The shortlisted works for the South East Asia and the Pacific region are:
Best Book
Between The Assassinations by Aravind Adiga (Australia)
The Spare Room by Helen Garner (Australia)
The Good Parents by Joan London (Australia)
Forbidden Cities by Paula Morris (New Zealand)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Australia)
Breath by Tim Winton (Australia)
Best First Book
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Australia)
The Boat by Nam Le (Australia)
The Year of The Shanghai Shark by Mo Zhi Hong (New Zealand)
Misconduct by Bridget van der Zijpp (New Zealand)
Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan (Malaysia)
The Shallow End by Ashley Sievwright (Australia)
[Links here will take you to "Combined Reviews" posts for the relevant books on this weblog. I'll aim to add entries for each of the other Australian books on the lists over the coming weeks.]
Susan Wyndham, on the "Sydney Morning Herald" weblog, is reporting that Alex Miller's novel Landscape of Farewell was chosen among the "Annual Foreign Novels, 21st Century" by the People's Literature Publishing House and the Chinese Association of Foreign Literature, thereby becoming the first Australian novel to be so honoured in the seven years that the award has been presented.
According to Wikipedia, "The Michael L. Printz Award is an annual award in the United States for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. It is named for a school librarian from Topeka, Kansas, who was a long-time active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). The national award is sponsored by Booklist magazine and administered by YALSA, a division of the American Library Association."
In 2009, the award has been presented to Jellicoe Road (published in Australia as On the Jellicoe Road) by Australian author Melina Marchetta.
In addition to Marchetta's win, Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan was named an honor book for the same award. This continues a remarkable run by Australian books with this award. In 2008 One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke was an honor book, as were Surrender by Sonya Hartnett and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak in 2007, and Black Juice by Lanagan and I am the Messenger by Zusak in 2006.
The winners of the 2008 Aurealis awards have been announced. These awards are presented to the best Australian sf and fantasy across a number of categories. The full shortlists for these awards were previously posted here.
The winners were:
Best Science Fiction Novel
K. A. Bedford, Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
Best Science Fiction Short Story
Simon Brown, "The Empire", Dreaming Again, Harper/Voyager
Best Fantasy Novel
Alison Goodman, The Two Pearls of Wisdom, HarperCollins
Best Fantasy Short Story
Cat Sparks, "Sammarynda Deep", Paper Cities, Senses 5 Press
Best Horror Novel
John Harwood, The Seance, Jonathan Cape Random House Australia
Best Horror Short Story
Kirstyn McDermott, "Painlessness", Greatest Uncommon Denominator #2
Best Anthology
Jonathan Strahan (editor), The Starry Rift, Viking Children's Books
Best Collection
Sean Williams & Russell B Farr (editor), Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams, Ticonderoga Publications
Best Illustated Book/Graphic Novel
Shaun Tan, Tales From Outer Suburbia, Allen & Unwin
Best Young Adult Novel
Melina Marchetta, Finnikin of the Rock, Viking Penguin
Best Young Adult Short Story
Trent Jamieson, "Cracks", Shiny #2
Best Children's Novel
Emily Rodda, The Wizard of Rondo, Omnibus Books
Best Children's Illustrated Work/Picture Book
Richard Harland & Laura Peterson (illustrator), Escape!, Under Siege, Race to the Ruins, The Heavy Crown, The Wolf Kingdom series, Omnibus Books
Peter McNamara Convenors' Award for Excellence
Jack Dann
I was late in posting about this award in December (after the shortlist had been released in November), and now I find myself lagging behind again as the winner was announced in December - the day after I published the shortlist as it happened: sometimes you just can't win.
The 2008 ACT Book of the Year was Walking the Camino: a modern pilgrimage to Santiago by Tony Kevin. Also announced in the press release cited above were four ACT Poetry Prizes.
Judith Wright Prize for a published collection by an Australian poet
Winner: Barry Hill (VIC) - Necessity - Poems 1996-2006 (soi3 modern poets, an imprint of papertiger media inc)
Highly Commended:
J S Harry (NSW) - Not Finding Wittgenstein (Giramondo Poets)
Commended:
Meredith Wattison (NSW) - Basket of Sunlight (Puncher and Wattmann)
Petra White (VIC) - The Incoming Tide (John Leonard Press)
Short-list:
Elizabeth Campbell (VIC) - Letters to the Tremulous Hand (John Leonard Press)
Brendan Ryan (VIC) - A paddock in his head (Five Islands Press)
Alec Bolton Prize for an unpublished manuscript by an Australian poet
Winner:
Dr David Musgrave (NSW) - "Phantom Limb"
Highly Commended:
Cate Kennedy (VIC) - "The Taste of River Water"
Jean Kent (NSW) - "Travelling with the Wrong Phrase Books"
Short-list:
Carolyn Leach-Paholski (VIC) - "The Sorrow Bird"
Tracy Ryan (WA) - "The Argument"
Rosemary Dobson Prize for an unpublished poem by an Australian poet
Winner:
Andy Jackson (VIC) - "Secessionist"
Commended:
Anna Buck (NSW) - "A Council House in Heaven"
Paul Cliff (ACT) - "Snake-Man (La Perouse)"
Short-list:
Chris Andrews (VIC) - "By Accident"
Jennifer Compton (VIC) - "Approaching Firenze"
John De Laine (SA) - "Field Mouse"
Joan Kerr (VIC) - "Gobray, bunhan bunahan, khen"
Dr Edward Livings (VIC) - "Tawny Frogmouth"
Nathan Shepherdson (QLD) - "unlike"
David Campbell Prize for an unpublished poem by an ACT poet
Winner:
Dr Danijela Kambaskovic-Sawers - "A Migrant Writer on a Bus (Thinking of Kundera)"
Commended:
Dr Elizabeth Lawson - "On the Undoing of Buttons"
Dr Paul Magee - "Like words laid down in sleep"
Short-list:
Lesley Lebkowicz - "The Spy, Volodya Petrov, leaves his home..."
Moya Pacey - "The Wardrobe"
Geoff Page - "Dancing in a Paper Hat"
Maggie Shapley - "Changdeokgung"
Something I missed back in November was the the announcement of the shortlisted works for the 2008 ACT Book of the Year.
The shortlisted works are:
Nicholas Drayson: Love and the Platypus [Scribe Publications]
Jackie French: Pharaoh: The Boy Who Conquered the Nile [Angus and Robertson]
Kim Huynh: Where the Sea Takes Us: A Vietnamese-Australian Story [Fourth Estate]
Tony Kevin: Walking the Camino: A Modern Pilgrimage to Santiago [Scribe Publications]
Robert Macklin: Kevin Rudd: The Biography [Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books]
The winner will be announced at the end of December 2008.
The shortlisted works for the 2008 Aurealis Awards have been announced. These are awards are presented to the best Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror works in a given year.
Best Science Fiction Novel
K A Bedford, Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
Marianne de Pierres, Chaos Space, Book Two of the Sentients of Orion, Orbit
Simon Haynes, Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch, Fremantle Press
Kim Westwood, The Daughters of Moab, HarperVoyager
Sean Williams, Earth Ascendant, Astropolis Book Two, Orbit
Best Science Fiction Short Story
Simon Brown, "The Empire", Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager
Nathan Burrage, "Black and Bitter, Thanks", The Workers' Paradise, Ticonderoga Publications
Trent Jamieson, "Delivery", Cosmos, #21
Margo Lanagan, "The Fifth Star in the Southern Cross", Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager
Tansy Rayner Roberts, "Fleshy", 2012, Twelfth Planet Press
Best Fantasy Novel
Alison Goodman, The Two Pearls of Wisdom, HarperCollins
Sylvia Kelso, Amberlight, Juno Books
Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels, Allen & Unwin
Juliet Marillier, Heir to Sevenwaters, Macmillan Australia
Karen Miller, The Riven Kingdom, Godspeaker Book Two, HarperVoyager
Best Fantasy Short Story
Thoraiya Dyer, "Night Heron's Curse", Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, #37
Karen Maric, "The Last Deflowerer", Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, #32
Angela Slatter, "Dresses, Three", Shimmer, Vol 2 #4
Cat Sparks, "Sammarynda Deep", Paper Cities, Senses 5 Press
Kim Westwood, "Nightship", Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager
Best Horror Novel
Jack Dann, The Economy of Light, PS Publishing
Nick Gadd, Ghostlines, Scribe Publications
John Harwood, The Seance, Jonathan Cape
Best Horror Short Story
Lee Battersby, "In From the Snow", Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager
Deborah Biancotti, "Pale Dark Soldier", Midnight Echo, #1
Trent Jamieson, "Day Boy", Murky Depths, #4
Kirstyn McDermott, "Painlessness", Greatest Uncommon Denominator (GUD), #2
Ian McHugh, "Bitter Dreams", L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Vol XXIV
Best Anthology
Bill Congreve & Michelle Marquardt (editors), The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fourth Annual Volume, MirrorDanse Books
Jack Dann (editor), Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager
Jonathan Strahan (editor), The Starry Rift, Viking Children's Books
Best Collection
Robert Hood, Creeping in Reptile Flesh, Altair Australia Books
Sean Williams and Russell B. Farr (editor), Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams, Ticonderoga Publications
Best Illustrated Book / Graphic Novel
Steve Hunt (illustrator/co-author) & David Richardson (co-author), The Cloudchasers, ABC Books
Shaun Tan, Tales from Outer Suburbia, Allen & Unwin
Colin Thompson, The Floods Family Files, Random House Australia
Julie Watts (author) & Graeme Base (illustrator), The Art of Graeme Base, Penguin/Viking
Best Young Adult Novel
Isobelle Carmody, The Stone Key, Obernewtyn Chronicles, Volume Five, Penguin/Viking
David Cornish, Lamplighter, Monster Blood Tattoo Book Two, Omnibus Books Alison Goodman, The Two Pearls of Wisdom, HarperCollins
Melina Marchetta, Finnikin of the Rock, Penguin/Viking
Sean Williams, The Changeling, The Changeling series book one, Angus & Robertson
Best Young Adult Short Story
Deborah Biancotti, "The Tailor of Time", Clockwork Phoenix, Norilana Books
Dirk Flinthart, "This Is Not My Story", Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, #37
Trent Jamieson, "Cracks", Shiny, #2
Kevin MacLean, "Eye of the Beholder", Misspelled, DAW Books
Best Children's Novel
Simon Higgins, Moonshadow, Eye of the Beast, Random House Australia
Sophie Masson, Thomas Trew and the Island of Ghosts, Hodder Children's
Emily Rodda, The Wizard of Rondo, Omnibus Books
Carole Wilkinson, Dragon Dawn, Black Dog Books
Sean Williams, The Changeling and The Dust Devils, The Changeling series books one and two, Angus & Robertson
Best Children's Illustrated Work/Picture Book
Anna Fienberg, Barbara Fienberg & Kim Gamble, Tashi and the Phoenix, Allen & Unwin
Richard Harland & Laura Peterson (illustrator), Escape!, Under Siege, Race to the Ruins, The Heavy Crown, The Wolf Kingdom series, Omnibus Books
Ian Irvine & David Cornish (illustrator), Thorn Castle, Giant's Lair, Black Crypt, Wizardry Crag, The Sorcerer's Tower series, Omnibus Books
Sally Morgan with Ezekiel, Ambelin and Blaze Kwaymullina & Adam Hill (illustrator), Curly and the Fent, Random House Australia
Richard Tulloch & Terry Denton (illustrator), Twisted Tales, Random House Australia
Winners will be announced at the Aurealis Awards ceremony in Brisbane on Saturday the 24th January 2009.
According to the webpage: "The Warwick Prize for Writing is an innovative new literature prize that involves global competition, and crosses all disciplines. "The Prize will be given biennially for an excellent and substantial piece of writing in the English language, in any genre or form, on a theme which will change with every award.
The winner of the inaugural Prize will be announced in February 2009. "The winner of this award will receive £50,000 and the opportunity to take up a short placement at The University of Warwick."
The 2008 longlist includes Someone Else by John Hughes, a collection of fictional essays. "The Sydney Morning Herald" asked him about it all.
David Malouf has been announced as the winner of the 2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award for his short story collection, The Complete Stories.
The shortlisted works were:
Michelle de Kretser, The Lost Dog, Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Ceridwen Dovey, Blood Kin, Publisher: Atlantic Books
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Publisher: Penguin
David Malouf, The Complete Stories, Publisher: Random House
Janette Turner Hospital, Orpheus Lost, Publisher: HarperCollins
John Romeril, Melbourne playwright and screenwriter, has been announced as the winner of the 2008 Patrick White Award. This award was set up by Patrick White, using the prize money from his 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. The aim of the annual award is to recognise Australian writers who may not have received their due recognition.
The relevant Wikipedia page carries a full list of past winners. The most recent of which are:
2007 - David Rowbotham
2006 - Morris Lurie
2005 - Fay Zwicky
2004 - Nancy Phelan
2003 - Janette Turner Hospital
2002 - TAG Hungerford
2001 - Geoff Page
2000 - Thomas W. Shapcott
The longlisted works for the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award have been announced. This is always one heck of a list so don't be surprised if I miss an Australian entry. (Feel free to write and inform me of any omissions.)
Australian books longlisted:
The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll
Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee
The Trout Opera by Matthew Condon
Love and the Platypus by Nicholas Drayson
The Widow and her Hero by Tom Keneally
The Memory Room by Christopher Koch
The Butterfly Month by Ariella Kornmehl (trans. Faith Hunter)
Landscape of Farewell by Alex Miller
A Curious Intimacy by Jessica White
The Seamstress by Geraldine Wooller
The shortlist will be announced on 2nd April 2009, and the winner on 11th June 2009.
[Update: Doh, wrong year!]
[Update 2: Added books by White and Wooller.]
[Update 3: Faith Hunter has pointed out that she translated the Dutch novel The Butterfly Month by Ariella Kornmehl.]
Steve Toltz's novel, A Fraction of the Whole, continues to impress as it is named on the shortlist for the "Guardian" First Book Award.
The full shortlist is as follows:
A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
Stalin's Children by Owen Matthews
God's Own Country by Ross Raisin
The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
The winner will be announced in early December.
Nam Le has been announced as the winner of the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize, for his collection of short stories, The Boat. This prize is awarded to writers under the age of 30, who write in English, and is worth a cool £60,000. This book will feature in a Combined Reviews post next week.
The Colin Roderick Award is the principle award of the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies, and is presented to the best book published in Australia, in the preceding year, which deals with any aspect of Australian life. The award is currently valued at $10,000.
The winner of the 2007 award was Jamaica by Malcolm Knox (Allen & Unwin).
Also shortlisted for the award were:
The Fern Tattoo by David Brooks (UQP)
Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital (HarperCollins)
Where the Sea Takes Us by Kim Huynh (HarperPerennial)
Typewriter Music by David Malouf (UQP)
Another Country by Nicolas Rothwell (Black Inc.)
Communism: A Love Story by Jeff Sparrow (Melbourne University Publishing)
The shortlisted works for the 2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award have been announced.
The shortlisted works are:
Michelle de Kretser, The Lost Dog, Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Ceridwen Dovey, Blood Kin, Publisher: Atlantic Books
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Publisher: Penguin
David Malouf, The Complete Stories, Publisher: Random House
Janette Turner Hospital, Orpheus Lost, Publisher: HarperCollins
The full longlist was published here. The winner of the $A110,000 prize will be announced on November 21, 2008.
The winners of the NSW Premier's History Awards were announced on October 27th. The judges for the 2008 NSW Premiers History Awards were Rosemary Block, Sean Brawley, Alan Dearn, John McQuilton, Catherine Robinson and Richard Waterhouse.
The winners were:
Audio/Visual Prize
Captain Cook: Obsession and Discovery, Tony Wright, Paul Rudd, Matthew Thomason and Wain Fimeri (Screen Australia National Interest Program, December Films, Cook Films, Fern Productions, South Pacific Pictures)
Australian History Prize
Vietnam: the Australian War, Paul Ham (HarperCollins)
Community and Regional History Prize
Sacred Waters: the Story of the Blue Mountains Gully Traditional Owners, Dianne Johnson, in collaboration with the residents of the Gully and their descendants (Halstead Press)
General History Prize
The Politics of War: Race, Class and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia, Michael A McDonnell (The University of North California Press)
John and Patricia Ward History Prize
Australia's Forgotten Prisoners: Civilians Interned by the Japanese During World War Two, Christina Twomey (Cambridge University Press)
Young People's History Prize
Australians in the Vietnam War, Robert Lewis & Tim Gurry (Ryebuck Media)
The shortlisted titles were chosen from 268 audio/visual and book entries.
Each of the book prizes is worth $15,000 and the shortlists were as follows:
Audio/Visual Prize
A Question of Trust: Stolen wages in Queensland, Lorena Allam and Andrei Chabunov (ABC Radio National, Hindsight)
Our Secret War, Tom Morton (ABC Radio National, Social History Unit)
Captain Cook: Obsession and Discovery, Tony Wright, Paul Rudd, Matthew Thomason and Wain Fimeri (Screen Australia National Interest Program, December Films, Cook Films, Fern Productions, South Pacific Pictures)
Australian History Prize
Van Diemen's Land, James Boyce (Black Inc.)
Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia, John Fitzgerald (UNSW Press)
Vietnam: the Australian War, Paul Ham (HarperCollins)
Community and Regional History Prize
Sacred Waters: the Story of the Blue Mountains Gully Traditional Owners, Dianne Johnson, in collaboration with the residents of the Gully and their descendants (Halstead Press)
The Railways of Victoria 1854-2004, Robert Lee (MUP)
Grandeur and Grit: a History of Glebe, Max Solling (Halstead Press)
General History Prize
Captain Cook: Voyager Between Worlds, John Gascoigne (Hambledon Continuum)
The Minefield: an Australian Tragedy in Vietnam, Greg Lockhart (A&U)
The Politics of War: Race, Class and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia, Michael A McDonnell (The University of North California Press)
John and Patricia Ward History Prize
Magnificent Obsession: the Story of the Mitchell Library, Sydney, Brian H Fletcher (A&U)
The Secret War: a True History of Queensland's Native Police, Jonathan Richards (UQP)
Australia's Forgotten Prisoners: Civilians Interned by the Japanese During
World War Two, Christina Twomey (Cambridge University Press)
Young People's History Prize
Lofty's Mission, Krista Bell, illus. David Miller (Hachette Livre Australia)
Australians in the Vietnam War, Robert Lewis & Tim Gurry (Ryebuck Media)
The Prime Ministers' National Treasures, Matthew Thomason, Paul Rudd & Perry Stapleton (A Screen Australia National Interest Program)
The longlist for Australia's richest literary prize, the $110,000 Australia-Asia Literary Award, was announced on October 17, 2008 by Western Australia's Culture and Arts Minister John Day.
The longlisted works are:
J.M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year, Publisher: Random House Group Ltd
Matthew Condon, The Trout Opera, Publisher: Random House (Vintage)
Michelle de Kretser, The Lost Dog, Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Ceridwen Dovey, Blood Kin, Publisher: Atlantic Books
Rodney Hall, Love Without Hope Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Publisher: Penguin
Mireille Juchau, Burning In, Giramondo Publishing
David Malouf, The Complete Stories, Publisher: Random House
Alex Miller, Landscape of Farewell, Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Haruki Murakami, After Dark, Translator: Jay Rubin, Publisher: Random House Group
Indra Sinha, Animal's People, Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
Janette Turner Hospital, Orpheus Lost, Publisher: HarperCollins
The winner will be announced on Friday November 21, 2008.
The winner of the 2008 Man Booker prize has been announced as Aravind Adiga, for his novel The White Tiger.
The other works on the shortlist were:
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
Adiga is the third debut novelist to win the award after Arundhati Roy for The God of Small Things in 1997, and DBC Pierre for Vernon God Little in 2003.
With the 2008 Man Booker Prize winner to be announced tomorrow, Tuesday 14th October (UK time), "The Age" has The book, based around 20-something Jasper Dean's account of his life with his father Martin, was originally commissioned as a short story by a magazine but, Toltz said, he just "couldn't bring myself to submit it".
"I thought I could expand it to a larger story, a slightly larger story, so I kept expanding it, and kept expanding it, and about 690 pages and five years later, I finished it," he said while in London ahead of the award ceremony at the Guildhall.
"I wanted to explore how it would be for the children of people who are crucified, or skinned alive, in the media, that was my first instinct.
"And also ... explore how a child of rebel could also rebel."In "The Australian", Elisabeth Wynhausen and John Zubrzycki profile two of the authors on the list, Toltz and Aravind Adiga, who have struck gold with their debut novels - both of whom the paper identifies as being Australian.
The 2008 Davitt Awards were presented in Melbourne, at the Celtic Club, on Friday 10th October. These awards are presented by Sisters in Crime (Australia), and aim to honour Australian crime fiction written by women. The full shortlists for these awards are available here (PDF file].
The winners were:
Fiction
Frantic by Katherine Howell
YA Fiction
The Night Has a Thousand Eyes by Mandy Sayer
True Crime
Killing Jodie by Janet Fife-Yeomans
Readers' Choice
Scarlet Stiletto - The First Cut by Lindy Cameron
The winner of the 2008 "The Australian"/Vogel Literary Award has been announced as Andrew Croome, for his novel Document Z. The award is presented to the best unpublished manuscript from an Australian writer under 35.
The shortlisted works were:
Jeremy Chambers, The Vintage and the Gleaning
Andrew Croome, Document Z
Demet Divaroren, Orayt?
Rachel Hennessy, The Heaven I Swallowed
T.R.Magarey, Credible Deterrent: A Folly in Parts
Threasa Meads, Nobody
You can read further details about these works here.
The authors shortlisted for the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize for Young Writers have been announced. The list includes:
Caroline Bird (UK)
Ceridwen Dovey (South Africa)
Edward Hogan (UK)
Nam Le (Vietnam/Australia)
Dinaw Mengestu (Ethiopia)
Ross Raisin (UK)
The winner of the award will be announced in November 2008.
The winners of the 2008 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards have been announced.
The winners are:
Science Writer Award
Why is Uranus Upside Down? And other questions about the Universe, Professor Fred Watson (Allen & Unwin)
Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate - The Harry Williams Award
"In My Shoes", Quentin McDermott and Steve Taylor (Four Corners, The ABC)
Film Script - Pacific Film & Television Commission Award
"Prime Mover", David Caesar (Porchlight Films)
Drama Script (Stage) Award
"When the Rain Stops Falling", Andrew Bovell (Scott Theatre)
Television Script - QUT Creative Industries Award
"Underbelly: Episode 7 - Wise Monkeys", Felicity Packard (Screentime)
History Book - Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland Award
Drawing the Global Colour Line Professor Marilyn Lake and Professor Henry Reynolds (Melbourne University Publishing)
Non Fiction Book Award
Muck, Craig Sherborne (Black Inc)
Fiction Book Award
The Spare Room, Helen Garner (Text Publishing)
Poetry Collection - Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award
Typewriter Music, David Malouf (University of Queensland Press)
Australian Short Story - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award
Someone Else, John Hughes (Giramondo Publishing)
Emerging Queensland Author - Manuscript Award
Omega Park, Amy Vought Barker
Unpublished Indigenous Writer - The David Unaipon Award
Every Secret Thing, Marie Munkara
Children's Book - Mary Ryan's Award
The Peasant Prince, Li Cunxin and Anne Spudvilas (Penguin Group Australia)
Young Adult Book Award
Requiem for a Beast, Matt Ottley (Lothian Children's Books an imprint of Hachette Livre Australia)
You can read the full shortlists for the awards here.
The winners of the 2008 Prime Minister's Literary Awards were announced in Canberra on Friday night.
The winners were:
Fiction
The Zookeeper's War by Stephen Conte
Non-Fiction
Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers by Philip Jones
The full list of the shortlisted works are available here.
It took me a while to find out that the Prime Minister's Literary Award winners will be announced on Friday 12th September - and then only because Ampersand Duck said that she had scored an invite. I'll just have to sign up for the e-newsletters in future.
The six shortlisted works for the 2008 Man Booker prize have been announced.
The shortlisted works are:
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
Australia is represented by Steve Toltz, although Aravind Adiga has lived in Sydney and undertook some education there. The Penguin Australia website indicates that he currently lives in Mumbai.
"Island" magazine runs the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize each year. The entry conditions state that submissions may only be a single poem, or linked suite of poems, not longer than 100 lines. The winner of the 2008 prize was Angela Malone for her poem "Drawing in the Birth Room".
Highly Commended were:
"Bedroom Ceiling Fan" by Mike Ladd
"Good Nighting the Mirror" by Kristen Lang
"Retrospective" by Joan Kerr
The winners of the 2008 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were announced last night.
The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
The Spare Room by Helen Garner (Text Publishing)
The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction
The Ferocious Summer: Palmer's Penguins and the Warming of Antarctica by Meredith Hooper (Allen & Unwin)
The CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry
Press Release by Lisa Gorton (Giramondo Publishing)
The Louis Esson Prize for Drama
"When the Rain Stops Falling" by Andrew Bovell (Brink Productions)
The Prize for Young Adult Fiction
Tomorrow All Will Be Beautiful by Brigid Lowry (Allen & Unwin)
The Prize for a First Book of History
The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathanael Pepper and the Ruptured World by Robert Kenny (Scribe)
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
"Trapped in the Aboriginal Reality Show" by Marcia Langton (Griffith Review)
The Prize for Indigenous Writing
Anonymous Premonition by Yvette Holt (University of Queensland Press)
The Prize for the Best Music Theatre Script
"The Wild Blue" by Anthony Crowley (St. Martins Theatre)
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
Going Finish by Mandy Maroney
The Grollo Ruzzene Foundation Prize for Writing about Italians in Australia
Head Over Heel by Chris Harrison (Murdoch Books)
The John Curtin Prize for Journalism
"Out of Control: The Tragedy of Tasmania's Forests" by Richard Flanagan (The Monthly)
You can read the full list of shortlisted works here.
The "BoomerangBooks" website is reporting that Duet by Kimberley Freeman has won the Long Category ection of the 2008 Australian Romantic Book of the Year awards. One Night Before Marriage by Anne Oliver won the award in the Short Category. The full list of the shortlisted works is available on the Romance Writers of Australia website.
The 2008 Ned Kelly Awards (which honor crime writing in Australia) were presented in Melbourne on Friday 29th August, as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival.
The winners were:
Fiction
Shatter by Michael Robotham
First Novel
The Low Road by Chris Womersley
Non-Fiction
Red Centre, Dead Heart by Evan McHugh
Lifetime Achievement
Marele Day
You can read the full list of nominees here.
The Readings Bookshop weblog has reported that the shortlisted works for the First Indie Awards have been announced. This award is presented by Australia's independent boksellers for the best book of the past 12 months. The winner will be announced on October 6th.
The shortlisted works are:
Debut Fiction: Addition by Toni Jordan
Non-Fiction: American Journeys by Don Watson
Fiction: Breath by Tim Winton
Children's Book: Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan
"The Age" Book of the Year Awards were announced on Friday night as part of the Melbourne Writers' Festival.
The Fiction prize was taken out by Breath by Tim Winton, the Non-Fiction award by American Journeys by Don Watson, and the Poetry winner was Not Finding Wittgenstein by J.S. Harry. In addition the Book of the Year - the best of the best - was awarded to American Journeys by Don Watson.
The shortlists for the 2008 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted works are:
Science Writer Award
"Applying the paradox of prevention: Eradicate HIV", Bill Bowtell (Griffith Review)
Hail Caesar, Professor Caroline de Costa (Boolarong Press)
Cool Scientist, Stephen Luntz (Control Publications)
The Rise of Animals: Evolution and Diversification of the Kingdom Animalia, Dr Patricia Vickers-Rich, Mikhal A. Fedonkin, James G. Gehling, Kathleen Grey and Guy M. Narbonne (Johns Hopkins University Press)
Why is Uranus Upside Down? And other questions about the Universe, Professor Fred Watson (Allen & Unwin)
Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate - The Harry Williams Award
People Like Us, Waleed Aly (Pan Macmillan Australia)
John Winston Howard, Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen (Melbourne University Publishing)
"No Jail for Rape of Girl, 10", Tony Koch (The Australian)
"Quarterly Essay Issue 27: Reaction Time", Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe (Quarterly Essay)
"In My Shoes", Quentin McDermott and Steve Taylor (Four Corners, The ABC)
Film Script - Pacific Film & Television Commission Award
"Elise", James Bogle (Film 2 Opportunity)
"Prime Mover", David Caesar (Porchlight Films)
"The Square", Joel Edgerton and Matthew Dabner (Film Depot)
"Punishment", Danny Matier (Glover Productions)
Drama Script (Stage) Award
"When the Rain Stops Falling", Andrew Bovell (Scott Theatre)
"Ruben Guthrie", Brendan Cowell (Company B)
"Toy Symphony", Michael Gow (Belvoir Street Theatre - B Sharp)
"The Serpent's Teeth", Daniel Keene (Sydney Theatre Company)
"The Seed", Kate Mulvany (Belvoir Street Theatre - B Sharp)
Television Script - QUT Creative Industries Award
"Bed of Roses", Jutta Goetze and Elizabeth Coleman (Ruby/Southern Star Ent. Pty. Ltd)
"Underbelly: Episode 7 - Wise Monkeys", Felicity Packard (Screentime)
"Stupid, Stupid Man, Episode 9 - The Black Dog", Timothy Pye (Jigsaw Entertainment)
History Book - Faculty of
Arts, University of Queensland Award
Van Diemen's Land, James Boyce (Black Inc)
Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia, Professor John Fitzgerald (University of New South Wales Press Limited)
Vietnam The Australian War, Paul Ham (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
An Exacting Heart, Jacqueline Kent (Penguin Group)
Drawing the Global Colour Line Professor Marilyn Lake and Professor Henry Reynolds (Melbourne University Publishing)
Non Fiction Book Award
Arthur Boyd, Dr Darleen Bungey (Allen & Unwin)
An Exacting Heart, Jacqueline Kent (Penguin Group)
Muck, Craig Sherborne (Black Inc)
American Journeys, Don Watson (Random House (KNOPF))
Fiction Book Award
His Illegal Self, Peter Carey (Random House (KNOPF))
Diary of a Bad Year, J.M Coetzee (Text Publishing)
The Trout Opera, Matthew Condon (Random House (Vintage))
The Spare Room, Helen Garner (Text Publishing)
Breath, Tim Winton (Penguin Group Australia)
Poetry Collection - Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award
Event, Judith Bishop (Salt Publishing/Inbooks)
Bark, Anthony Lawrence (University of Queensland Press)
Typewriter Music, David Malouf (University of Queensland Press)
The Australian Popular Songbook, Alan Wearne (Giramondo Publishing)
Australian Short Story - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award
Someone Else, John Hughes (Giramondo Publishing)
Camera Obscura, Kathryn Lomer (University of Queensland Press)
Redfin, Anthony Lynch (ARCADIA)
The End of the World, Paddy O'Reilly (University of Queensland Press)
Emerging Queensland Author - Manuscript Award
None of the Other Flies Follow My Crooked Lines, Simon Groth
Side Close Side; Stories of Love, Krissy Kneen
Learning How to Breathe, Linda Neil
Omega Park, Amy Vought Barker
Unpublished Indigenous Writer - The David Unaipon Award
10 Hail Mary's, Kate Howarth
White Elephant, Jeanine Leane
Every Secret Thing, Marie Munkara
Children's Book - Mary Ryan's Award
Jessica's Box, Peter Carnavas (New Frontier Publishing)
The Peasant Prince, Li Cunxin and Anne Spudvilas (Penguin Group Australia)
Collecting Colour, Kylie Dunstan (Lothian Children's Books an imprint of Hachette Livre Australia)
Crow and The Waterhole, Ambelin Kwaymullina (Fremantle Press)
The Worry Tree, Marianne Musgrove (Random House)
Young Adult Book Award
Requiem for a Beast, Matt Ottley (Lothian
Children's Books an imprint of Hachette Livre Australia)
Marty's Shadow, John Heffernan (Omnibus Books)
The Push, Julia Lawrinson (Penguin Group Australia)
Town, James Roy (University of Queensland Press)
At Seventeen, Celeste Walters (University of Queensland Press)
The winners will be announced on Tuesday 16th September.
The winners of the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year awards have been announced. We published the
full list of the nominated titles back in April.
The winners were:
Book of the Year: Older Readers
The Ghost's Child by Sonya Hartnett (Viking)
Honour books:
Black Water by David Metzenthen (Penguin)
Marty's Shadow by John Heffernan (Omnibus)
Book of the Year: Younger Readers
Dragon Moon by Carole Wilkinson (Black Dog Books)
Honour books:
Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp by Odo Hirsch (A&U)
Sixth Grade Style Queen (Not!) by Sherryl Clark, illus by Elissa Christian (Puffin)
Book of the Year: Early Childhood
Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley by Aaron Blabey (Viking)
Honour books:
Cat by Mike Dumbleton, illus by Craig Smith (Working Title Press)
Lucy Goosey by Margaret Wild, illus by Ann James (Little Hare Books)
Picture Book of the Year
Requiem for a Beast by Matt Ottley, (Lothian)
Honour books:
Dust by Colin Thompson and 13 other illustrators (ABC Books)
The Peasant Prince by Anne Spudvilas, text by Li Cunxin (Viking)
Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
Parsley Rabbit's Book about Books by Frances Watts, illus by David Legge (ABC Books)
Honour books:
Girl Stuff: Your Full-on Guide to the Teen Years by Kaz Cooke (Viking)
Kokoda Track: 101 Days by Peter Macinnis (Black Dog Books)
Crichton Award for New Illustrators
Santa's Aussie Holiday by Anna Walker, text by Maria Farrer (Scholastic)
The shortlisted works for the 2008 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards have been announced.
The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
Diary Of A Bad Year, JM Coetzee (Text Publishing)
The Lost Dog, Michelle de Kretser (Allen & Unwin)
The Spare Room, Helen Garner (Text Publishing)
The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction
Van Diemen's Land, James Boyce (Black Inc)
Napoleon, Philip Dwyer (Allen & Unwin)
Ferocious Summer, Meredith Hooper (Allen & Unwin)
Detainee 002, Leigh Sales (Melbourne University Publishing)
Muck, Craig Sherborne (Black Inc)
The Prize for Young Adult Fiction
Solo, Alyssa Brugman (Allen & Unwin)
Pool, Justin D'Ath (Ford Street Publishing)
Tomorrow All Will Be Beautiful, Brigid Lowry (Allen & Unwin)
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
Conditions of Return, Daniel Ducrou
Going Finish, Mandy Maroney
In Search of the Blue Tiger, Robert Power
The C J Dennis Prize for Poetry
Event, Judith Bishop (Salt Publishing)
Press Release, Lisa Gorton (Giramondo Publishing)
As We Draw Ourselves, Barry Hill (Five Islands Press)
The Louis Esson Prize for Drama
When the Rain Stops Falling, Andrew Bovell (Brink Productions)
The Story of the Miracles at Cookie's Table, Wesley Enoch (Currency Press)
Toy Symphony, Michael Gow (Belvoir Street Theatre)
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
Out of Control: The Tragedy of Tasmania's Forests, Richard Flanagan (The Monthly)
Trapped in the Aboriginal Reality Show, Marcia Langton (Griffith Review)
Love and Money, Anne Manne (Quarterly Essay)
The Exiled Child, Meera Atkinson (Griffith Review)
The Prize for a First Book of History
Van Diemen's Land, James Boyce (Black Inc)
The Lamb Enters the Dreaming, Robert Kenny (Scribe)
Pistols! Treason! Murder!, Jonathan Walker (Melbourne University Publishing)
The Prize for Indigenous Writing Anonymous
Premonitions, Yvette Holt (University of Queensland Press)
Me, Antman & Fleabag, Gayle Kennedy (University of Queensland Press)
Fight for Liberty and Freedom: The Origins of Australian Aboriginal Activism, John Maynard (Aboriginal Studies Press)
The John Curtin Prize for Journalism
The Search for Edna Lavilla, Eurydice Aroney and Sharon Davis (Radio Eye, ABC Radio National)
Shame Job: Circle of Abuse, Nick Farrow and Sarah Ferguson (Sunday Program, Nine Network Australia)
Out of Control: The Tragedy of Tasmania's Forests, Richard Flanagan (The Monthly)
The Prize for Best Music Theatre Script
The Hanging of Jean Lee, Libretto by Jordie Albiston and Abe Pogos. Composed by Andrée Greenwell. Based upon the verse history by Jordie Albiston (Green Music with The Studio, Sydney Opera House)
The Wild Blue, Music, lyrics and book by Anthony Crowley (St Martins Theatre)
Crossing Live, Words by Matthew Saville. Music by Bryony Marks (Chambermade)
The Grollo Ruzzene Foundation Prize for Writing about Italians in Australia
See Naples and Die, Penelope Green (Hachette Australia)
Head Over Heel, Chris Harrison (Murdoch Books)
Antonio's Seed, Merry Watson (Jeremiah's Circle Publishing)
The winners will be announced at a presentation dinner on Monday 1st September.
The shortlisted works for the 2008 Prime Minister's Literary Awards have been announced. These are the major literary awards (worth $100,000, tax free, in each of the Fiction and Non-Fiction categories) that were foreshadowed by the incoming Australian Government at the end of 2007. The major controversy about the awards being that the Prime Minister will supposedly make the final decision on the winners. Those winners will be announced in the coming months, but I can't seem to find an actual date on the website. Given this is the first year for these awards that's not such a bad thing. The administrators just have to pick a particular date that will be consistent in the years ahead.
The shortlisted works are:
Fiction
Burning In by Mireille Juchau
El Dorado by Dorothy Porter
Jamaica: A novel by Malcolm Knox
Sorry by Gail Jones
The Complete Stories by David Malouf
The Widow and Her Hero by Tom Keneally
The Zookeeper's War by Steven Conte
Non-Fiction
A History of Queensland by Raymond Evans
Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time by Clive James
My Life as a Traitor by Zarah Ghahramani with Robert Hillman
Napoleon: The Path to Power, 1769-1799 by Philip Dwyer
Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers by Philip Jones
Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer
Vietnam: The Australian War by Paul Ham
The shortlisted works for 2008 The Age Book of the Year have been announced.
The shortlists are as follows:
Fiction
Diary of a Bad Year, J.M. Coetzee
Burning In, Mireille Juchau
The Orphan Gunner, Sara Knox
The Good Parents, Joan London
Breath, Tim Winton
Non-Fiction
I Am Melba, Ann Blainey
Van Dieman's Land, James Boyce
An Exacting Heart, Jacqueline Kent
A Family History of Smoking, Andrew Riemer
American Journeys, Don Watson
Poetry
Not Finding Wittgenstein, J.S. Harry
Shades of the Sublime, John Kinsella
Bark, Anthony Lawrence
Typewriter Music, David Malouf
Scar Revision, Tracy Ryan
The winners of the awards, as well as the Book of the Year (the best of the best), will be announced at the Melbourne Writers' Festival later in August.
Damian, of the "Crime Downunder" weblog is reporting that the shortlists for the 2008 Ned Kelly Awards (for Best Australian crime fiction) have been released. The awards presentation is being held on Friday August 29th as a part of the Melbourne Writers' Festival.
Best Crime Fiction
Among the Dead by Robert Gott (Scribe)
Sucked In by Shane Maloney (Text)
El Dorado by Dorothy Porter (Pan Macmillan)
Shatter by Michael Robotham (Hachette Livre)
Best First Crime Novel
The Low Road by Chris Womersley (Scribe)
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (Penguin)
Golden Serpent by Mark Abernethy (Allen & Unwin)
Best Non Fiction
Underbelly: The Gangland War by John Silvester and Andrew Rule (Sly Ink)
Killing Jodie by Janet Fife-Yeomans (Penguin)
Red Centre, Dark Heart by Evan McHugh (Penguin)
That's two nominations in a row for Steve Tolz, after he made the longlist for the 2008 Man Booker prize yesterday.
The panel of judges for the 2008 Man Booker prize have announced their longlist of titles, 13 in all.
The list comprises:
Aravind Adiga The White Tiger
Gaynor Arnold Girl in a Blue Dress
Sebastian Barry The Secret Scripture
John Berger From A to X
Michelle de Kretser The Lost Dog
Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies
Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs
Mohammed Hanif A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Philip Hensher The Northern Clemency
Joseph O'Neill Netherland
Salman Rushdie The Enchantress of Florence
Tom Rob Smith Child 44
Steve Toltz A Fraction of the Whole
Two Australians in de Kretser and Toltz.
The shortlist will be announced on 9th September, and the winner on 14th October.
A couple of weeks back I noted that the 2008 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal had been presented to The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser (who I'm sure I saw driving through Richmond last Friday night). Now comes the news that, as well as the Gold Medal, the ALS also presents a biennial Magarey Medal for Biography. And this year that award was won by Ida Leeson: A Life by Dr Sylvia Martin.
[I probably got confused with this medal.]
The longlist for the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize for young writers has been released. In case you've forgotten (and who wouldn't with all these awards around?) the Dylan Thomas prize "is open to young writers of any nationality, from anywhere in the world, writing in English. Writers must be under 30 years of age on 3rd April 2007. The following Genres are all eligible for entry: novels, collections of short stories, poetry, screenplays, radio and theatre plays." Which is interesting as I wasn't aware that poetry was a "genre".
Sorry "Genre".
Anyway, enough joking around.
The longlisted works are:
Ishq & Mushq by Priya Basil
The Orientalist and the Ghost by Susan Barker
Trouble Came to the Turnip by Caroline Bird
The Secret by Zoe Brigley
Zoology by Ben Dolnick
Blood Kin by Ceridwen Dovey
Submarine by Joe Dunthorne
Oystercatchers by Susan Fletcher
Satsuma Sun Mover by Adam Green
Blackmoor by Edward Hogan
Sons and Other Flammable Objects by Porohistra Khakpour
The Boat by Nam Le
Children of the Revolution by Dinaw Mengestu
There is an Anger that Moves by Kei Miller
God's Own Country by Ross Raisin
St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
The only Australian in the group is Nam Le. The short list will be announced in September and the winner in November this year.
The "Boomerang Books" blog has announced that the shortlists for the Romance Writers of Australia's 2008 Romantic Book of the Year awards have been released.
Long work
Claiming the Courtesan, Anna Campbell (Harper Collins Australia)
Duet, Kimberley Freeman (Hachette Livre Australia)
Tomorrows Promises, Anna Jacobs (Hodder)
Ashblane's Lady, Sophia James (Harlequin Quill)
Serendipity, Melanie La' Brooy (Penguin)
Lands Beyond the Sea, Tamara McKinley (Hodder & Staughton)
Short work
The Prince's Forbidden Virgin, Robyn Donald (Harlequin Mills & Boon)
Their Lost-and-Found Family, Marion Lennox (Harlequin Medical)
The Single Dad's Marriage Wish, Carol Marinelli (Harlequin Medical)
Island Heat, Sarah Mayberry (Harlequin Blaze)
One Night before Marriage, Anne Oliver (Harlequin Sexy Sensation)
Outback Man Seeks Wife, Margaret Way (Harlequin Sweet)
The winners will be announced in Melbourne on August 23rd, at the Romance Writers' annual conference.
"Locus" Magazine is the main newsletter of the sf and fantasy fields and each year runs a readers' poll of the best works. Australia has 2 (well, okay 1.5) winners this year:
ANTHOLOGY
The New Space Opera, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos)
ART BOOK
The Arrival, Shaun Tan (Lothian 2006; Scholastic)
Steven Carroll was last night announced as the winner of the 2008 Miles Franklin Award for his novel The Time We Have Taken. This is the third novel in an on-going series about a Melbourne surburb and follows the novels The Art of the Engine Driver and The Gift of Speed, both of which were previously shortlisted for this award. Carroll also won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Novel for the South-East Asia and South Pacific region for this book.
Shaun Tan has won an award in the 2008 Boston Globe Horn Book Awards, titled "Special Citation, for excellence in graphic storytelling", for his graphic novel The Arrival. These awards honour excellence in children's literature.
With the 2008 Miles Franklin Award to be presented on Thursday June 19th, Jane Sullivan of "The Age" re-assesses the field. In case you've forgotten, the shortlisted novels are:
The Fern Tattoo by David Brooks, UQP
The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll, Fourth Estate
Love without Hope by Rodney Hall, Picador
Sorry by Gail Jones, Vintage
Landscape of Farewell by Alex Miller, A&U
The winner of the 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has been announced as De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage.
The winner was chosen from the following shortlisted novels:
The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas
The Sweet & Simple Kind by Yasmine Gooneratne
De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Let it be Morning by Sayed Kashua
The Attack by Yasmina Khadra
Winterwood by Patrick McCabe
The Woman Who Waited by Andrei Makine
The 2008 Australian Book Industry Awards were announced in Melbourne on Sunday 15th June.
The winners were:
Lloyd O'Neil Award for outstanding service to the Australian book industry - David Malouf.
Book of the Year - Geraldine Brooks for her novel People of the Book (HarperCollins Publishers Australia).
Literary Fiction Book of the Year - People of the Book.
Newcomer of the Year - Pauline Nguyen for her cookbook/memoir Secrets of the Red Lantern (published by Murdoch Books).
Illustrated Book of the Year - Maggie Beer for Maggie's Harvest (Penguin Group Australia).
Book of the Year for Younger Children - Li Cunxin's children's version of Mao's Last Dancer, The Peasant Prince (Penguin Group Australia), with illustrations by Anne Spudvilas.
Book of the Year for Older Children and the International Success Award - John Flanagan for his novel Rangers Apprentice 7: Erak's Ransom (Random House Australia).
General Non-Fiction Book of the Year - Kaz Cooke for Girl Stuff (Penguin Group Australia).
Biography of the Year Award - Darleen Bungey for Arthur Boyd: A Life (Allen & Unwin).
Australian General Fiction Book of the Year - Monica McInerney for Those Faraday Girls (Penguin Group Australia).
Publisher of the Year - Penguin Group (Australia).
Chain Bookseller of the Year - Dymocks Garden City (Booragoon) Perth.
Small Publisher of the Year - Scribe Publications.
Independent Bookseller of the Year - Gleebooks, Glebe.
Specialist Bookseller of the Year - Boffins Bookshop, Perth.
Distributor of the Year - Alliance Distribution Services.
Publisher Marketing Campaign of the Year 2008 - Allen & Unwin for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling.
Bookseller Marketing Event of the Year 2008 - Pages & Pages Booksellers for A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.
The Pixie O'Harris Award for distinguished and dedicated service to the development and reputation of Australian children's books - Kate Colley.
The nominees for the 2008 Ned Kelly Awards have been released.
Best First Fiction
Golden Serpent, Mark Abernethy
Shadow Maker, Robert Sims
A Fraction Of The Whole, Steve Toltz
The Low Road, Chris Womersley
The Butcherbird, Geoffrey Cousins
Bye Bye Baby, Lauren Crow
Broken Swallow, JJ Burn
Green Velvet Shoes, Christina Ann Alexander
Frantic, Katherine Howell
Vodka Doesn't Freeze, Lea Giarratano
Iraqi Icicle, Bernie Dowling
Maelstrom, Michael MacConnell
Best Fiction
Trick or Treat, Kerry Greenwood
Cherry Pie, Leigh Redhead
Endangered List, Brian Westlake
Harem Scarum, Felicity Yound
Sensitive New Age Spy, Geoffrey McGeachin
Sucked In, Shane Maloney
Night Has A Thousand Eyes, Mandy Sayer
Orpheus Lost, Janette Turner Hospital
Amongst The Dead, Robert Gott
Appeal Denied, Peter Corris
Open File, Peter Corris
Gospel, Sydney Bauer
Broken, Ilsa Evans
Skin Bone, Kathryn Fox
Fan Mail, PD Martin
el Dorado, Dorothy Porter
Shattered, Gabrielle Lord
The Calling, Jane Goodall
Shatter, Michael Rowbotham
Game As Ned, Tim Peglar
The Tattooed Man, Alex Palmer
Blood Sunset, Jarad Henry
Redback, Lindy Cameron
Best Non-Fiction
Bondi Badlands, Greg Callaghan
Mr Sin, Tony Reeves
Underbelly The Gangland War, John Silvester and Andrew Rule
Killing Jodie, Janet Fife-Yeomans
Red Centre: Dark Heart, Evan McHugh
Big Shots, Adam Shand
Lives of Crime, Tippet & Munro
Fatal Flaw, Roger Maynard
Ned Kelly's Jerilderie Letter, Carole Wilkinson
Wild Colonial Boys, Paula Hunt
[Thanks to the AustCrimeFiction weblog for the link.]
This award for young writers was set up in 1996 under the terms of the will of late Kathleen Adele Mitchell. According to the website "Her aim was to encourage 'the advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature, to improve the educational style of the
authors, and to provide them with additional amounts and thus enable them to improve their literary efforts'." The 2008 award was won by Randa Abdel-Fattah for her novel Ten Things I Hate About Me .
The winners of the the 2008 NSW Premier's Literary Award were announced last night in Sydney.
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
Michelle de Kretser The Lost Dog
Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction
Tom Griffiths Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
Kathryn Lomer Two Kinds of Silence
Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature
James Roy Town
Patricia Wrightson Prize
Li Cunxin & Anne Spudvilas (illus) The Peasant Prince
Community Relations Commission Award
Jacob G. Rosenberg Sunrise West
Gleebooks Prize
Kay Anderson Race and the Crisis of Humanism
UTS Award for New Writing
Rhyll McMaster Feather Man
Play Award
Debra Oswald Stories in the Dark
Script Writing Award
Anna Broinowski Forbidden Lie$
The NSW Premier's Literary Scholarship Prize
William Christie Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Literary Life
Book of the Year
Michelle de Kretser The Lost Dog
A Special Award was also presented to Tom Keneally for lifetime achievement.
The winners of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize have been announced.
Overall Best Book
Lawrence Hill of Canada The Book of Negroes
Overall Best First Book
Tahmima Anam of Bangladesh for A Golden Age
The shortlisted works for the 2008 Australian Literary Society Gold Medal have been released.
The Lost Dog, Michelle de Kretser (A&U)
Not Finding Wittgenstein, J S Harry (Giramondo)
Feather Man, Rhyll McMaster (Brandl & Schlesinger)
Typewriter Music, David Malouf (UQP)
Landscape of Farewell, Alex Miller (A&U)
The winner will be announced during the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, over the weeken of June 29 to July 2.
[Thanks to the "Boomerang Blog" for the link.]
As a way of celebrating the 40th anniversary of the start of the Man Booker prize, the organiser have decided to set up a method of selecting the Best of the Bookers, the best novel to have won the prize over those 40 years. An advisory committee has selected a shortlist of six novels and the public is invited to vote for the winner.
The shortlisted works are:
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker, 1995
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey, 1988
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, 1999
The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell, 1973
The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer, 1974
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, 1981
The winner will be announced on July 10, 2008.
The winners of the Nita Kibble and Dobbie Encouragement awards were announced last night.
The winner of the Nita Kibble Award was Nights in the Asylum by Carol Lefevre, and the winner of the Dobbie encourgaement award was The Anatomy of Wings by Karen Foxlee.
The shortlists for both awards were posted target=new>here at the end of April.
The Australian Booksellers Association has announced the shortlisted titles for the Nielsen BookData 2008 Booksellers Choice Award. This is an award which recognises the book that booksellers most enjoyed reading or hand-selling in 2007.
The shortlisted works are:
Orpheus Lost (Janette Turner Hospital, Fourth Estate)
The Memory Room (Christopher Koch, Knopf)
4 Ingredients (Kim McCosker and Rachel Bermingham, 4 Ingredients)
The Peasant Prince (Li Cunxin, illus by Anne Spudvilas, Viking)
Maggie's Harvest (Maggie Beer, Lantern)
Girl Stuff: Your Full-on Guide to the Teenage Years (Kaz Cooke, Viking)
[Thanks to the Boomerang Books weblog for the note.]
"Locus Magazine" is the major news magazine of the science fiction and fantasy fields. Each year the magazine runs a poll of the best works in the genre, and the 2008 finalists have now been published. Among the nominated works are: Extras by Scott Westerfeld and Magic's Child by Justine Larbalestier, in the Young Adult Book category; "Dark Integers" by Greg Egan in the Novelette category; The New Space Opera by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan in the Anthology
category; The Arrival by Shaun Tan in the Art Book category; and Shaun Tan in the Artist category. The winners will be announced in Seattle on June 21st.
The shortlisted novels for the 2008 Kibble Awards (best novel by an Australian woman writer) have been announced. The shortlisted novels are:
Sorry by Gail Jones
Burning In by Mireille Juchau
Nights in the Asylum by Carol Lefevre
In addition, the Dobbie Award shortlist (for a first novel by a woman) was announced:
The Anatomy of Wings by Karen Foxlee
Nine Parts Water by Emma Hardman
A Curious Intimacy by Jessica White
I'm not sure when the winners will be announced.
The shortlisted novels for the 2008 Miles Franklin Award were announced last night.
The shortlist:
The Fern Tattoo by David Brooks, UQP
The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll, Fourth Estate
Love without Hope by Rodney Hall, Picador
Sorry by Gail Jones, Vintage
Landscape of Farewell by Alex Miller, A&U
You can read the full longlist here. Over the past couple of weeks all of these novels have appeared in the Combined Reviews section of Matilda.
The shortlists for the 2008 NSW Premier's Award have been announced. The shortlisted works are:
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($20,000)
J.M. Coetzee Diary of a Bad Year
Matthew Condon The Trout Opera
Gregory Day Ron McCoy's Sea of Diamonds
Michelle de Kretser The Lost Dog
Tom Keneally The Widow and Her Hero
Alex Miller Landscape of Farewell
Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction ($20,000)
Tom Griffiths Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica
Philip Jones Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers
Guy Pearse High and Dry: John Howard, Climate Change the Selling of Australia's Future
Jacob G Rosenberg Sunrise West
Nicholas Rothwell Another Country
Maria Tumarkin Courage
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($15,000)
Joanne Burns an illustrated history of dairies
Brook Emery Uncommon Light
Peter Kirkpatrick Westering
Kathryn Lomer Two Kinds of Silence
David Malouf Typewriter Music
Phyllis Perlstone The Edge of Everything
Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature ($15,000)
Lollie Barr The Mag Hags
David Metzenthen Black Water
Robert Newton The Black Dog Gang
James Roy Town
David Spillman & Lisa Wilyuka Us Mob Walawurru
Lizzie Wilcock GriEVE
Patricia Wrightson Prize ($15,000)
Aaron Blabey Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley
Martin Chatterton The Brain Finds a Leg
Li Cunxin & Anne Spudvilas (illus) The Peasant Prince
Liz Lofthouse & Robert Ingpen (illus) Ziba Came on a Boat
Emily Rodda The Key to Rondo
Carole Wilkinson Dragon Moon
Community Relations Commission Award ($15,000)
John Fitzgerald Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia
David Hill The Forgotten Children
Mark Kurzem The Mascot
Jacob G. Rosenberg Sunrise West
Peta Stephenson The Outsiders Within: Telling Australia's Indigenous-Asian Story
Gleebooks Prize ($10,000)
Kay Anderson Race and the Crisis of Humanism
Helen Gilbert & Jacqueline Lo Performance and Cosmopolitics: Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australia
Niall Lucy & Steve Mickler The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press
Glenn Nicholls Deport: A History of Forced Departures from Australia
Peta Stephenson The Outsiders Within: Telling Australia's Indigenous-Asian Story
Gillian Whitlock Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit
UTS Award for New Writing ($5,000)
No short list with this Award. Winner will be announced 19 May 2008
Play Award ($15,000)
Nicki Bloom Tender
Wesley Enoch The Story of the Miracles at Cookie's Table
Debra Oswald Stories in the Dark
Alana Valentine Parramatta Girls
Script Writing Award ($15,000)
Anna Broinowski Forbidden Lie$
Elissa Down & Jimmy Jack (a.k.a. Jimmy the Exploder) The Black Balloon
Kristen Dunphy East West 101: episode 1, The Enemy Within
Alison Nisselle Curtin
Cathy Randall Hey, Hey, It's Esther Blueburger
Michale James Rowland & Helen Barnes Lucky Miles
The NSW Premier's Literary Scholarship Prize ($15,000)
Katherine Barnes The Higher Self in Christopher Brennan's Poems: Esotericism, Romanticism, Symbolism
William Christie Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Literary Life
Richard Freadman This Crazy Thing a Life: Australian Jewish Autobiography
Helen Gilbert & Janet Lo Performance and Cosmopolitics: Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australia
Anthony Uhlmann Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image
Ann Vickery Stressing the Modern: Cultural Politics in Australian Women's Poetry
The full list of the awards and associated judges' comments is available.
The Blake Dawson Prize for Business Literature is not an award that I have come across before. Anyway, "The Australian" newspaper is reporting that the 2008 prize has been won by Caroline Overington for her work Kickback: Inside the Australian Wheat Board Scandal. You'll recall that the Australian Wheat Board got caught providing kickbacks to the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein prior to the Second Gulf War. The prize is worth $30,000 to the winner.
Joint winners of the 2008 National Biography Award have been announced.
The works are:
Napoleon: The Path To Power 1769-1799 by Philip Dwyer
These Few Lines: A Convict Story - The Lost Lives Of Myra & William Sykes by Graham Seal
The awards were announced last night at the State Library of NSW. The winners will share prizemoney of $20,000.
The winner of the 2008 ABC Fiction Award has been announced as God for the Killing by Kain Massin. Two other manuscripts were Highly Commended: Red Queen by Honey Brown and Homing by Lyndal Caffrey. Kain Massin will receive prize-money of $10,000 for the award, and will have his manuscript published by ABC Books later in
2008.
The shortlisted works for the 2008 National Biography Award have been released.
Napoleon: The Path To Power 1769-1799 by Philip Dwyer
Lucy Osburn, A Lady Displaced by Judith Godden
A Thinking Reed by Barry Jones
The Mascot by Mark Kurzem
Jonestown: The Power And The Myth Of Alan Jones by Chris Masters
These Few Lines: A Convict Story - The Lost Lives Of Myra & William Sykes by Graham Seal
The winner will be announced at the State Library of NSW on April 10.
I don't think this narrow gap between the announcements of the shortlist and the winner is a good idea. There is no time for the public to be aware of the award before it's done with and forgotten. Heaven forbid anyone would want to actually, you know, read the books before knowing the title of the winner. The Miles Franklin Award seems to have its timing about right: a month between the annnnouncements of longlist and shortlist, and then two months more before the winner is named. There is no real expectation that people will rush out and read all books on the longlist, but there is a possibility they might do so for the shortlisted works. Not much chance of that with the National Biography Award it seems. This is an important award, but is anyone going to remember it come Anzac Day? I somehow doubt it. And that's a pity.
The 2008 IMAC Dublin Literary Award shortlisted works have been announced as follows:
The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas
The Sweet & Simple Kind by Yasmine Gooneratne
De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Let it be Morning by Sayed Kashua
The Attack by Yasmina Khadra Winterwood by Patrick McCabe
The Woman Who Waited by Andrei Makine
The eight novels listed here were whittled down from the original list of 137. The winner will be announced in Dublin on 12th June 2008.
The winners of the 2008 Kiriyama Prize have been announced. The winners were:
Fiction Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Non-Fiction
The Fragile Edge: Diving and Other adventures in the South Pacific by
Julia Whitty
From the prize's website: "The Kiriyama Prize was established in 1996 to recognize outstanding books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia that encourage greater mutual understanding of and among the peoples and nations of this vast and culturally diverse region. The Prize consists of a cash award of US $30,000, which is split equally between the fiction and nonfiction winners. Beginning in 2008, if a work in translation is chosen as a winner in either category, the translator will receive $5,000 and the winning author $10,000. "
Rosemary Sorenson of "The Australian" finds that all is not sweetness and light with the Prime Minister's Literary Awards. It seems that Kevin Rudd has reserved the right to overrule the judging panels' recommendations. Just imagine the flak that will fly if that ever happened.
As well as that interesting piece of news, the article names the judging panels. Fiction Chair - Peter Pierce, former chair of Australian Literature at James Cook University John Marsden, author Margaret Throsby, ABC radio broadcaster
Non-Fiction Chair - Hilary Charlesworth, law faculty at the Australian National University John Doyle, performer and writer Sally Morgan, author and director at the Centre for Indigenous History and the Arts at the University of Western Australia
Official press release.
The Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year shortlisted works were announced today.
Book of the Year: Older Readers
Black Water by David Metzenthen (Penguin)
The Ghost's Child by Sonya Hartnett (Viking)
Leaving Barrumbi by Leonie Norrington (Omnibus)
Love Like Water by Meme McDonald (A&U)
Marty's Shadow by John Heffernan (Omnibus)
Pharaoh: The Boy Who Conquered the Nile by Jackie French (A&R)
Book of the Year: Younger Readers
Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp by Odo Hirsch (A&U)
Dragon Moon by Carole Wilkinson (Black Dog Books)
The Key to Rondo by Emily Rodda (Omnibus)
The Shaggy Gully Times by Jackie French, illus by Bruce Whatley (A&R)
Sixth Grade Style Queen (Not!) by Sherryl Clark, illus by Elissa Christian (Puffin)
Winning the World Cup by David Metzenthen, illus by Stephen Axelsen (Puffin)
Book of the Year: Early Childhood
Cat by Mike Dumbleton, illus by Craig Smith (Working Title Press)
Lucy Goosey by Margaret Wild, illus by Ann James (Little Hare Books)
The Night Garden by Elise Hurst (ABC Books)
Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley by Aaron Blabey (Viking)
Shhh! Little Mouse by Pamela Allen (Viking)
The Trouble with Dogs! by Bob Graham (Walker Books)
Picture Book of the Year
Dust by Colin Thompson and 13 other illustrators (ABC Books)
The Island by Armin Greder, A&U)
The Peasant Prince by Anne Spudvilas, text by Li Cunxin (Viking)
Requiem for a Beast by Matt Ottley, Lothian)
You and Me: Our Place by Dee Huxley, text by Leonie Norrington (Working Title Press)
Ziba Came on a Boat by Robert Ingpen, text by Liz Lofthouse (Viking)
Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
The Antarctica Book: Living in the Freezer by Mark Norman (Black Dog Books)
Australia's Deadly and Dangerous Animals by Michael Cermak (Steve Parish Publishing)
Girl Stuff: Your Full-on Guide to the Teen Years by Kaz Cooke (Viking)
Kokoda Track: 101 Days by Peter Macinnis (Black Dog Books)
Ned Kelly's Jerilderie Letter by Carole Wilkinson, illus by Dean Jones (Black Dog Books)
Parsley Rabbit's Book about Books by Frances Watts, illus by David Legge (ABC Books)
Crichton Award for New Illustrators
The Crow and the Waterhole by Ambelin Kwaymullina (Fremantle Press)
The Empty City by Jonathon Oxlade, text by David Megarrity (Lothian)
Ock Von Fiend by Luke Edwards (Omnibus)
Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley by Aaron Blabey (Viking)
Santa's Aussie Holiday by Anna Walker, text by Maria Farrer (Scholastic)
The World According to Warren by Sonia Martinez, text by Craig Silvey (Fremantle Press)
The winners of the awards will be announced on Friday August 15, at the start of Children's Book Week.
[Thanks to Boomerang Books for the information.]
The winner of the 2008 Barbara Jefferis Award has been announced as Feather Man by Rhyll McMaster.
The award is offered annually for "the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women or girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society."
The shortlisted works were:
Karen Foxlee: The Anatomy of Wings (University of Queensland Press)
Rhyll McMaster: Feather Man (Brandl & Schlesinger)
Geraldine Wooller: The Seamstress (University of Western Australia Press) Michelle de Kretser: The Lost Dog (Allen & Unwin)
The winners of the 2008 Ditmar Awards have been announced.
Best Novel
Saturn Returns by Sean Williams (Published by Orbit)
Best Novella/Novelette
"Lady of Adestan" by Cat Sparks (Published by in "Orb" #7 edited by Sarah Endacott)
Best Short Story
"The Dark and What It Said" by Rick Kennett (Published in "Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine" #28 edited by Zara Baxter)
Best Collected Work
(tie) The New Space Opera edited by Jonathan Strahan (Published
by HarperCollins Australia)
Fantastic Wonder Stories edited by Russell B. Farr (Published by Ticonderoga Publications)
Best Art Work
Nick Stathopolous for the Rhinemonn cover
Best Fan Writer
Rob Hood for film reviews on his website
Best Fan Art '
Exterminate!' Dalek Postcards - Katherine Linge <
B>Best Fan Production
2007 Snap Shot Project - interviews with influential members of the Australian speculative fiction scene conducted by Alisa Krasnostein, Ben Payne, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Kathering Linge, Kaaron Warren and Rosie Clark
Best Fanzine
"Not If You Were the Last Short Story on Earth" edited by Alisa Krasnstein, Ben Payne,
Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts
Best Professional Achievement
Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-Operative Ltd for five issues in 2007, including three electronic Best Of anthologies
Best Fan Achievement
Alisa Krasnostein for "ASiF! Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus"
Best New Talent
Tehani Wessely
William Atheling Jr Award
Grant Watson for "The Bad Film Diaries" (Published in "Borderlands" #9.)
The shortlisted works for the 2008 Hugo Awards have been announced. These awards are decided by reader ballot and deal with categories within the science fiction and fantasy fields. To be eligible to vote you need to be a member of this year's World Science Fiction Convention, which will be held in Denver in early August.
Amongst the nominees this year are:
Best Novellette
"Dark Integers" by Greg Egan
"Glory" by Greg Egan
Best Professional Editor, Short Form
Jonathan Strahan (The New Space Opera (HarperCollins/Eos), The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 1 (Night Shade), Eclipse One (NightShade))
Best Related Work
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
Best Professional Artist
Shaun Tan
The fiction and non-fiction shortlists for the 2008 Kiriyama Prize have been
The Kiriyama Prize was established in 1996 to recognize outstanding books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia that encourage greater mutual understanding of and among the peoples and nations of this vast and culturally diverse region. The Prize consists of a cash award of US $30,000, which is split equally between the fiction and nonfiction winners. Beginning in 2008, if a work in translation is chosen as a winner in either category, the translator will receive $5,000 and the winning author
The shortlisted works are:
$10,000.
Fiction
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
The Complete Stories by David Malouf
The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones
Mosquito by Roma Tearne
I Love Dollars by Zhu Wen translated by Julia Lovell
Non-Fiction
The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam by Tom Bissell
East Wind Melts the Ice by Liza Dalby
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy by Ramachandra Guha
The Talented Women of the Zhang Family by Susan Mann
The Fragile Edge: Diving and Other Adventures in the South Pacific by Julia Whitty
The winners in both categories will be announced on April 1, 2008.
Jason Steger of "The Age" has announced that the winners of the South-East Asia and South Pacific region of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize are:
Best Novel
The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll
Best First Novel
The Anatomy of Wings by Karen Foxlee
Full details of all winners should be available sometime later today on the Commonwealth Writers' Prize website. The overall winners, across all regions, will be announced in South Africa on May 18.
The longlisted novels for the 2008 Miles Franklin Award were announced today. Fifty-nine novels were submitted for the award with nine chosen for the longlist.
The longlist:
Landscape of Farewell by Alex Miller, A&U
Love without Hope by Rodney Hall, Picador
Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital, Fourth Estate
Secrets of the Sea by Nicholas Shakespeare, Harvill Secker
Sorry by Gail Jones, Vintage
The Fern Tattoo by David Brooks, UQP
The Memory Room by Christopher Koch, Knopf
The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll, Fourth Estate
The Widow and Her Hero by Tom Keneally, Vintage
As usual there are a few surprises: why only nine books in the longlist when, presumably, the judges are going to name 5 or 6 for the shortlist?; no sign of The Trout Opera by Matthew Condon or The Children by Charlotte Wood; and only two women on the list. And it's interesting that no publisher has more than one entry on the longlist. The shortlist will be announced on 17th April, and the winner on 19th June.
And the awards just keep coming on this 13th day of March. Sonya Hartnett has been announced as the winner of the 2008 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
As posted back in October 2007, Hartnett was one of only two Australians (the other was John Marsden) nominated for the award, amongst a total of 155 nominees from 61 countries. According to the relevant Wikipedia page: "The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) may be awarded to authors, illustrators, narrators and/or promoters of reading whose work reflects the spirit of Astrid Lindgren. The object of the award is to increase interest in children's and young people's literature, and to promote children's rights to culture on a global level. The award is administered by The Swedish Arts Council."
[Thanks to Read Alert for the news.]
The Australian Prime Minister's new literary awards - one fiction, one non-fiction each worth a cool $100,000 - have now opened. Closing date/time for entries is 2pm, Friday March 28th 2008, so you'd better get your skates on. A condition of entry is that five (5) copies of each book be sent along with the completed entry form. Hope they've got a big warehouse. 'Cos, let's face it, they're going to get swamped, and there's probably only 50 books in each category in with a chance. A few other notes are of interest:
It's a big day today for Australian authors on the awards' front. The longlisted works for the Miles Franklin Award will be announced - which I should be able to list later tonight (I put together a list of possible novels a fortnight ago). And the regional winners of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize will also be announced - nominees here. Given all novels in both categories (Best Novel and Best First Novel) are Australian, someone we know will be happy. I'm not sure where the winners will be announced, but as this is a Commonwealth award I think it safe to assume London will be the venue. That will probably mean the "tyranny of time-zones" will come into effect and I won't have the winners till tomorrow.
The shortlisted works for the 2008 Barbara Jefferis Award have been announced. This award is offered annually for "the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women or girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society."
The shortlisted works are:
Karen Foxlee: The Anatomy of Wings (University of Queensland Press)
Rhyll McMaster:Feather Man (Brandl & Schlesinger)
Geraldine Wooller: The Seamstress (University of Western Australia Press)
Michelle de Kretser: The Lost Dog (Allen & Unwin)
The judges for the award are journalist Deborah Hope, academic Leigh Dale and author Rosie Scott. The winner will be announced at a function held on Friday, 28 March 2008.
Note: I can't find any recently updated webpage information regarding this award. The
information printed here is extracted from "The Overlow" column of "The Australian" newspaper book pages.
Each year about this time I produce a webpage which lists those novels which I figure might have a chance of being under consideration for the Man Booker Prize. I've just finished the
"Horrorscope", the Australian Dark Fiction weblog, alerts us to the announcement of the finalists in the 2008 Australian Shadows Award. "The Australian Shadows Award is an annual jury-judged literary award issued by the Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA) that honours the best works of Australian dark fiction published in the preceding year."
The finalists are:
Matthew Chrulew - "Between the Memories" (Aurealis #38/39)
David Conyers - "Subtle Invasion" (The Black Book of Horror, Mortbury Press)
Terry Dowling - "Toother" (Eclipse 1, Night Shade Books)
Rick Kennett - "The Dark and What It Said" (Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #28)
Martin Livings - "There Was Darkness" (Fantastic Wonder Stories, Ticonderoga
Publications)
Jason Nahrung - The Darkness Within (Hachette Livre)
Honorable mentions are given to:
David Conyers & John Sunseri - The Spiraling Worm (Chaosium)
Kaaron Warren - "Cooling the Crows" (In Bad Dreams, Eneit Press)
Marty Young - "The Wildflowers" (Fantastic Wonder Stories, Ticonderoga Publications)
The winner, which will be determined by guest judge Richard Harland, will be announced in April 2008.
The winners of the 2008 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature have been announced.
$15,000 Award for Children's Literature
Don't Call Me Ishmael (Michael Gerard Bauer, Omnibus)
$15,000 Award for Fiction
The Ballad of Desmond Kale (Roger McDonald, Vintage)
$10,000 Award for Innovation
Someone Else: Fictional Essays (John Hughes, Giramondo)
$15,000 Award for Nonfiction
Sunrise West (Jacob G Rosenberg, Brandl & Schlesinger)
$15,000 John Bray Poetry Award
Urban Myths: 210 Poems (John Tranter, UQP)
$10,000 Jill Blewett Playwright's Award for the Creative
Merger - art, life and the other thing (Duncan Graham)
$10,000 Award for an Unpublished Manuscript by a SA Emerging Writer
The Second Fouling Mark (Stephen Orr)
In addition, John Tranter won the South Australian Premier's Award for his poetry collection, Urban Myths: 210 Poems.
[Update: I've added the winners of the last two categories above.]
On 13th March 2008 the trustees of the Miles Franklin Award will release their longlisted titles for the 2008 award - yes, it's that time of year again. As I have done in the past, here are my suggestions for their consideration:
Aphelion by Emily Ballou
The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll
The River Baptists by Belinda Castles
Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee
The Trout Opera by Matthew Condon
Ron McCoy's Sea of Diamonds by Gregory Day
Love and the Platypus by Nicholas Drayson
Love Without Hopeby Rodney Hall
Sorry by Gail Jones
The Widow and Her Hero by Tom Keneally
Jamaica by Malcolm Knox
The Memory Room by Christopher Koch
Nights in the Asylum by Carol Lefevre
Landscape of Farewell by Alex Miller
El Dorado by Dorothy Porter
The Low Road by Chris Womersley
The Children by Charlotte Wood
Any other suggestions?
The Australia Council for the Arts have announced Christopher Koch and Gerald Murnane as recipients of its 2008 emeritus writers awards.
Dr Imre Salusinszky, chair of the Australia Council's literature board, said that the two awards recognised the calibre of the works created by the authors. 'There can be few more fitting recipients of these writers emeritus awards. Both have a level of public recognition that does not match their high literary stature,' he said. 'Christopher and Gerald have changed the face of Australian writing through the breadth of their respective imaginations. Each of their works are characterised by a uniquely Australian perspective on the world.'
The shortlists for the 2008 Ditmar Awards have been announced. These awards have been presented annually since 1969 at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention, to recognise professonal achievement in Australian science fiction (including fantasy and horror) and science fiction fandom. Nominations are accepted from "natural persons" within the Australian sf community, and the awards are determined by ballot of the members of the awarding convention.
Best Novel
The Company of the Dead by David Kowalski, (Published by PanMacmillan)
Extras by Scott Westerfeld (Published by Simon & Schuster)
Dark Space by Marianne de Pierres (Published by Orbit)
Saturn Returns by Sean Williams (Published by Orbit)
Magic's Child by Justine Larbelestier (Published by Penguin)
The Darkness Within by Jason Nahrung (Published by Hachette Livre)
Best Novella/Novelette
"Yamabushi Kaidan and the Smoke Dragon" by Shane Jiraiya-Cummings (Published by Ticonderoga Publications in Fantastic Wonder Stories edited by Russell B. Farr)
"Where is Brisbane and How Many Times Do I Get There?" by Paul Haines (Published by Izvori in Fantastical Journeys to Brisbane edited by Geoffrey Maloney, Trent Jamieson and Zoran Zivkovic)
"The Bluebell Vengence" by Tansy Rayner Roberts (Published "Andromeda Spaceways
Inflight Magazine" #28 edited by Zara Baxter)
"Lady of Adestan" by Cat Sparks (Published by in "Orb" #7 edited by Sarah Endacott)
"Cenotaxis" by Sean Williams (Published by MonkeyBrain Books)
"Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go To War Again" by Garth Nix (Published by Jim Baen's Universe)
Best Short Story
"The Dark and What It Said" by Rick Kennett (Published in "Andromeda Spaceways
Inflight Magazine" #28 edited by Zara Baxter)
"Domine" by Rjurik Davidson (Published in "Aurealis" #37 edited by Stephen Higgins and Stuart Mayne)
"A Scar for Leida" by Deb Biancotti (Published in Fantastic Wonder Stories edited
by Russell B. Farr)
"Bad Luck, Trouble, Death and Vampire Sex" by Garth Nix (Published in Eclipse One edited by Jonathan Strahan)
"The Sun People" by Sue Isle (Published by in "Shiny" #2 edited by Alisa Krasnstein, Ben Payne and Tansy Rayner Roberts)
"His Lipstick Minx" by Kaaron Warren (Published in The Workers' Paradise edited by Russell B. Farr and Nick Evans)
Best Collected Work
"Orb" #7 edited by Sarah Endacott (Published by Orb Publications) The Workers' Paradise edited by Russell B. Farr and Nick Evans (Published by Ticonderoga Publications)
New Ceres edited by Alisa Krasnstein (Published by Twelth Planet Press)
The New Space Opera edited by Jonathan Strahan (Published by HarperCollins Australia)
Fantastic Wonder Stories edited by Russell B. Farr (Published by Ticonderoga Publications)
Best Art Work
Daryl Lindquist for the "ASIM" #28 cover Nick Stathopolous for the "Daikaju" #3 cover Eleanor Clark for "ASIM" #31 internal art Amanda Rainey for The Workers' Paradise cover
Nick Stathopolous for the Rhinemonn cover
Eleanor Clark for "ASIM" #30 internal art
Best Fan Writer
Alexandra Pierce for "Last Short Story on Earth" and for ASiF! reviews
Shane Jiraiya-Cummings for "Horrorscope"
Grant Watson for the 'angriest' Livejournal
Rob Hood for film reviews on his website
Best Fan Art
'Exterminate!' Dalek Postcards - Katherine Linge
'Nights Edge' Convention Poster Art - John Parker
Best Fan Production
2007 Snap Shot Project - interviewswith influential members of the Australian speculative fiction scene conducted by Alisa Krasnstein, Ben Payne, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Kathering Linge, Kaaron Warren and Rosie Clark
Inkspillers Website - maintained by Tony Plank
'The Liminal' short film - directed by Clair McKenna Daikaju
Limerick Competition - by Robert Hood on his website
Talking Squid Website - by Chris Lawson
Best Fanzine
"The Australian Science Fiction Bullsheet" edited by Ted Scribner and Edwina Harvey
"Not If You Were the Last Short Story on Earth" edited by Alisa Krasnstein, Ben Payne, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts
"Steam Engine Time" edited by Bruce Gillespie
"Horrorscope" edited by Shane Jiraiya-Cummings
Best Professional Achievement
Gary Kemble for his continued coverage of speculative fiction on Articulate and ABC news online
Russell B. Farr for Ticonderoga Publications; in 2007, Russell produced an issue
of "Ticonderoga Online", The Workers' Paradise and Fantastic Wonder
Stories, which produced five Aurealis Award nominees
Jonathan Strahan for a prolific body of work editing The Jack Vance Treasury, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Best Short Novels of 2007, The New Space Opera, Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling and Eclipse One: New Science Fiction and Fantasy
Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-Operative Ltd for five issues in 2007, including three electronic Best Of anthologies
Jonathan Strahan, Garth Nix, Deb Biancotti and Trevor Stafford for compiling and promoting the new Australian Fantasy and SF catalogue in the United States to increase awareness and appreciation of forthcoming Australian SF and to expand creative and professional opportunities for writers
Best Fan Achievement
Alisa Krasnstein for "ASiF! Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus"
Marty Young for his work as President of the Australian Horror Writers Association
John Parker, Sarah Parker and Sarah Xu for Night's Edge Convention
Sarah Xu for the CyPEC Cyber-feminist Conference held as part of
Night's Edge convention
Best New Talent
Angela Slatter
Jason Nahrung
Nathan Burrage
Tehani Wessely
William Atheling Jr Award
Ian Nichols for "Seriatem, Seriatum, omnia Seriatem" (Published by "Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine" #30, edited by Robbie Matthews)
Tansy Rayner Roberts and Alexandra Pierce for review of Elizabeth Bear's New Amsterdam (Published as Podcast #2 on ASiF!)
Jonathan Strahan for editorial for The New Space Opera (Published in The New Space Opera by HarperCollins Australia)
Grant Watson for "The Bad Film Diaries" (Published in "Borderlands" #9.)
Ben Peek for the Aurealis Awards Shortlist Feature Article (Published on ASiF!)
Shane Jiraiya-Cummings for review of David Conyers' The Spiraling Worm
(Published on Horrorscope)
Ian Nichols for "The Shadow Thief" (Published by "The West Australian" Weekend Magazine on 22/09/2007)
Winners of these awards will be announced during Swancon 2008, the 47th Australian National SF Convention, which will be held over the Easter weekend, March 20-24, 2008.
The shortlists for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for 2008 have been announced. In the South East Asia and South Pacific region the nominated works are:
Best Book Award
Steven Carroll (Australia) The Time We Have Taken HarperCollins
Sonya Hartnett (Australia) The Ghost's Child Penguin Australia
Sarah Hopkins (Australia) The Crimes of Billy Fish ABC Books
Mireille Juchau (Australia) Burning In Australia Giramondo
Michelle De Kretser (Australia) The Lost Dog Australia Allen & Unwin
Alex Miller (Australia) Landscape of Farewell Allen & Unwin
Best First Book Award
Steven Conte (Australia) The Zookeepers War Australia Harper Collins
Karen Foxlee (Australia) The Anatomy of Wings Australia UQP
Sara Knox (Australia) The Orphan Gunner Giramondo
Carol Lefevre (Australia) Nights in the Asylum Picador
Marcella Polain (Australia) The Edge of the World Fremantle Press
The winners of the regional awards will be announced on 13th March 2008.
The shortlists for the 2008 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature have been announced (PDF file). Works are chosen from the previous two years (hence the appearance of two Miles Franklin award winning novels on the fiction list) and the winners will be announced at the Adelaide Writers' Week in the East Tent on Sunday 2 March 2008 at 4:30pm.
$15,000 Award for Children's Literature (212 entries)
Home (Narelle Oliver, Omnibus)
Foundling: Monster Blood Tattoo Book 1 (D M Cornish, Omnibus)
Don't Call Me Ishmael (Michael Gerard Bauer, Omnibus)
Macbeth and Son (Jackie French, Angus & Robertson)
Danny Allen Was Here (Phil Cummings, Pan Macmillan)
The Worry Tree (Marianne Musgrove, Random House)
$15,000 Award for Fiction (147 entries)
Sorry (Gail Jones, Vintage)
Diary of a Bad Year (J M Coetzee, Text)
El Dorado (Dorothy Porter, Picador)
Carpentaria (Alexis Wright, Giramondo)
The Ballad of Desmond Kale (Roger McDonald, Vintage)
Orpheus Lost (Janette Turner Hospital, Fourth Estate)
$10,000 Award for Innovation (38 entries)
Diary of a Bad Year (J M Coetzee, Text)
Montale, a Biographical Anthology (John Watson, Puncher and Wattmann) Cube Root of Book (Paul Magee, John Leonard Press)
Someone Else: Fictional Essays (John Hughes, Giramondo)
$15,000 Award for Nonfiction (125 entries)
The Lamb Enters the Dreaming (Robert Kenny, Scribe)
Sunrise West (Jacob G Rosenberg, Brandl & Schlesinger)
Packer's Lunch (Neil Chenoweth, Allen & Unwin)
The Content Makers (Margaret Simons, Penguin)
The Vietnam Years: From the Jungle to the Australian Suburbs (Michael Caulfield, Hachette)
Not Part of the Public: Non-Indigenous Policies and Practices and the Health of
Indigenous South Australians, 1836-1973 (Judith Raftery, Wakefield Press)
$15,000 John Bray Poetry Award (90 entries)
At the Flash and at the Baci (Ken Bolton, Wakefield Press)
Esperance: New and Selected Poems (Caroline Caddy, Fremantle Press) Urban Myths: 210 Poems (News and Selected) (John Tranter, UQP)
A Bud (Claire Gaskin, John Leonard Press)
Not Finding Wittgenstein (J S Harry, Giramondo)
Seriatim (Geoff Page, Salt)
$10,000 Jill Blewett Playwright's Award for the Creative Development of a play script by a SA writer (12 entries)
Umbrellas by Shiela Duncan Merger - Art, Life and the Other Thing by Duncan Graham
Wives and Boats by Thomas Brittain
$10,000 Award for an Unpublished Manuscript by a SA Emerging Writer (32 entries)
The Second Fouling by Stephen Orr
As the Sun Shines by Lesley Beasley
The Minaret Path by Julia Archer
[Thanks to Andrew Kelly for the heads up.]
The "ABC News" website is reporting that Shaun Tan has been awarded "Album of the Year at Angouleme, one of the world's biggest comic book festivals." The website also states that "Angouleme, held in western France annually, attracts tens of thousands of visitors and is the biggest comic book festival in the world, outside Japan." One report I've seen is that 220,000 people attend each year.
The winners of the 2007 Aurealis Awards were announced at a ceremony in Brisbane on Saturday 26th January. These awards honour the best Australian fiction in a number of sf and fantasy categories, and are decided by a committee of judges appointed in each category.
Best Science Fiction Novel
David Kowalski, The Company of the Dead, Pan Macmillan
Best Science Fiction Short Story
Cat Sparks, "Hollywood Roadkill", On Spec, #69
Best Fantasy Novel
Lian Hearn, Heaven's Net is Wide, Tales of the Otori The First Book, Hachette Livre
Best Fantasy Short Story
Garth Nix, "Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz go to War Again", Jim Baen's Universe, April 2007
Best Horror Novel
Susan Parisi, Blood of Dreams, Penguin Group (Australia)
Best Horror Short Story
Anna Tambour, "The Jeweller of Second-Hand Roe", Subterranean, #7
Best Young Adult Novel
Anthony Eaton, Skyfall, UQP
Best Young Adult Short Story
Deborah Biancotti, "A Scar for Leida", Fantastic Wonder Stories, Ticonderoga Publications
Best Children's (8-12 years) Long Fiction
Kate Forsyth, The Silver Horse, The Chain of Charms 2, Pan Macmillan
Kate Forsyth, The Herb of Grace, The Chain of Charms 3, Pan Macmillan
Kate Forsyth, The Cat's Eye Shell, The Chain of Charms 4, Pan Macmillan
Kate Forsyth, The Lightning Bolt, The Chain of Charms 5, Pan Macmillan
Kate Forsyth, The Butterfly in Amber, The Chain of Charms 6, Pan Macmillan [The judges considered this series as one work.]
Best Children's (8-12 years) Short Fiction (tie)
Marc McBride, World of Monsters, Scholastic Australia and
Briony Stewart, Kumiko and the Dragon, UQP
Peter McNamara Convenors' Award for Excellence
Terry Dowling, Rynemonn, Coeur de Lion Publications
Golden Aurealis
Novel: David Kowalski, The Company of the Dead, Pan Macmillan
Short Story: Cat Sparks, "Hollywood Roadkill", On Spec, #69
The winner and honorees of the 2008 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature have been announced. Among those honorees is One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke. This book was previously winner of Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, Best Young Adult Book, 2007; and shortlisted for both Children's Book Council Book of the Year Award, Book of the Year: Older Readers, 2007, and New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Ethel Turner Prize, 2007.
According to its website: "The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually for distinguished science fiction published in
paperback original form in the United States. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society." This year Sean Williams from Adelaide has been nominated for his novel Saturn Returns. (Full list of nominees.) The winner of the award will be announced at Norweson 31, which will be held in Seattle over the weekend of March 20-23, 2008.
[Thanks to Jonathan Strahan for the link.]
The nominees for the 2007 Aurealis Awards have now been announced. These awards honour the best Australian fiction in a number of sf and fantasy categories.
Best Science Fiction Novel
Marianne De Pierres, Dark Space, Orbit
Jack Heath, Remote Control, Pan Macmillan
David Kowalski, The Company of the Dead, Pan Macmillan
Sean Williams, Saturn Returns, Orbit
Best Science Fiction Short Story
Simon Brown, "Lonely as Life", Fantastic Wonder Stories, Ticonderoga Publications
Penelope Love, "Whitey", Shadow Plays, Elise Bunter
Chris McMahon, "The Eyes of Erebus", Daikaiju! 2 - Revenge of the Giant Monsters, Agog! Press
Cat Sparks, "Arctica", Fantastic Wonder Stories, Ticonderoga Publications
Cat Sparks, "Hollywood Roadkill", On Spec, #69
Best Fantasy Novel
Jennifer Fallon, The Gods of Amyrantha, The Tide Lords Book Two, Harper
Collins/Voyager
Lian Hearn, Heaven's Net is Wide, Tales of the Otori The First Book, Hachette Livre
Sylvia Kelso, The Moving Water, Book 2 of the Rihannar Chronicles, Thomson Gale
Glenda Larke, Song of the Shiver Barrens, The Mirage Makers Book Three, Harper Collins/Voyager
Michael Pryor, Heart of Gold, Second Volume of The Laws of Magic, Random House
Best Fantasy Short Story
R J Astruc, "The Perfume Eater", Strange Horizons, #16
Adam Browne, "An Account of an Experiment by Adam Browne", Orb Speculative Fiction, #7
Garth Nix, "Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz go to War Again", Jim Baen's Universe, April 2007
Angela Slatter, "The Angel Wood", Shimmer, November 2006
Cat Sparks, "A Lady of Adestan", Orb Speculative Fiction, #7
Best Horror Novel
The panel of judges for this division declined to select a short list from the nominated works. However, the winning novel will be announced at the ceremony.
Best Horror Short Story
Terry Dowling, "Toother", Eclipse, #1
Richard Harland, "Special Perceptions", At Ease with the Dead, Ash-Tree
Press
Rick Kennett, "The Dark and What It Said", Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, #28
Ben Peek, "Black Betty", Lone Star Stories, #23
Anna Tambour, "The Jeweller of Second-Hand Roe", Subterranean, #7
Best Young Adult Novel
Kate Constable, Taste of Lightning, Allen & Unwin
Anthony Eaton, Skyfall, UQP
Juliet Marillier, Cybele's Secret, Pan Macmillan
Michael Pryor, Heart of Gold, Second Volume of The Laws of Magic, Random
House
Scott Westerfeld, Extras, Simon Pulse
Best Young Adult Short Story
Deborah Biancotti, "A Scar for Leida", Fantastic Wonder Stories, Ticonderoga Publications
Shane Jiraiya Cummings, "Yamabushi Kaidan and the Smoke Dragon", Fantastic Wonder Stories, Ticonderoga Publications
Garth Nix, "Bad Luck, Trouble, Death and Vampire Sex", Eclipse, #1
Garth Nix, "Holly and Iron", Dark Alchemy, Allen & Unwin
Tracey Rolfe, "Cast Off", Fantastic Wonder Stories, Ticonderoga Publications
Best Children's (8-12 years) Long Fiction
Isobelle Carmody, A Mystery of Wolves, Penguin Books
Kate Forsyth, The Silver Horse, The Chain of Charms 2, Pan Macmillan
Kate Forsyth, The Herb of Grace, The Chain of Charms 3, Pan Macmillan
Kate Forsyth, The Cat's Eye Shell, The Chain of Charms 4, Pan Macmillan
Kate Forsyth, The Lightning Bolt, The Chain of Charms 5, Pan Macmillan
Kate Forsyth, The Butterfly in Amber, The Chain of Charms 6, Pan Macmillan
Emily Rodda, The Key to Rondo, Omnibus Books
Carole Wilkinson, Dragon Moon, Black Dog Books
Best Children's (8-12 years) Short Fiction
Luke Edwards, Ock Von Fiend, Omnibus Books
Anna Fienberg & Barbara Fienberg, Tashi and The Mixed Up Monster, Allen & Unwin
Marc McBride, World of Monsters, Scholastic Australia
Briony Stewart, Kumiko and the Dragon, UQP
The winners of these awards will be announced at a ceremony to be held in Brisbane on January 26, 2008.
"The Australian" is reporting that a new literary award will be announced shortly. Called the Prime Minister's Literary Prize it will chose single winners in fiction and non-fiction categories only. Each prize will be worth $100,000, with another $100,000 being spent to publicise the prize. At this time no firm eligibility criteria have been set, but it does appear that judges in each category will be appointed (single-year or ongoing?), and these judges will make recommendations to the PM. Not sure what ramifications this award will have on
the Miles Franklin Award as yet. We'll have to see the final conditions of the award.
A couple of weeks back I posted about the Australian novels that had been included on the longlist of works for the 2008 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. At that time I identified 6 novels - out of the 137 nominated - as Australian. Over the weekend, the Undercover blog, associated with "The Sydney Morning Herald", corrected that entry, and increased the number to 9.
Here is the final Australian list of novels:
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
Tuvalu by Andrew O'Connor *
The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
The Sweet and Simple Kind by Yasmine Gooneratne *
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
The Travel Writer by Simone Lazaroo *
Underground by Andrew McGahan
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
The ones I missed previously are marked with a *.
[Further update: as has been pointed out in the comments on this posting, the original notification of this update came from Susan Wyndham's Undercover blog, rather than the more general "Entertainment" blog.]
The winners of the 2007 International Horror Guild Awards were announced on November 1 during the World Fantasy Convention. Will Elliott was nominated for The Pilo Family Circus in the Best Novel Category, but lost out to The Unblemished by Conrad Williams. Terry Dowling was nominated for his short story "Cheat Light", and, while that story didn't win, Terry did tie for the award in the Best Collection (Single Author) Category for his collection Basic Black.
On the "Read Alert" weblog, the winners of the Inky Awards have been announced.
Golden Inky
Notes from the Teenage Underground, Simmone Howell (Pan Macmillan)
Silver Inky
Looking for Alaska, John Green (HarperCollins)
The Inky awards are readers' choice awards, organised by the State Library of Victoria, where voters must be under the age of 25. The Golden Inky is awarded to an Australian book, and the Silver to a book from an international writer. Indications are that this will now become an annual event.
The winners of the 2007 Davitt Awards have been announced. These awards are presented by the Australian chapter of Sisters in Crime and honour works in the crime genre, written by Australian women. This year's winners were:
Best True Crime and Readers' Choice
Silent Death: The Killing of Julie Ramage by Karen Kissane
Best Adult Crime
Undertow by Sydney Bauer
Best Young Adult Crime
The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty
Readers' Choice
Karen Kissane, and Devil's Food by Kerry Greenwood
Angela Savage was at the awards' presentation night and gives an account of what she saw there on her blog.
David Rowbotham has been announced as the winner of the 2007 Patrick White Award. The award was established in 1974 by Patrick White in order to honour those writers who had not received their "due recognition".
Previous winners of the award can be found on the relevant Wikipedia page.
The extremely long longlist of novels nominated for the 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has been announced. The Australian nominees that I've noticed are as follows:
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Underground by Andrew McGahan
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
There are 137 novels nominated so it is possible that I missed some. Dublin City Council will announce the shortlist on 2nd April 2008 and the winning novel will be announced by the Lord Mayor on 12th June 2008. The prize is worth 100,000 Euros.
The winners of the 2007 World Fantasy Awards have been announced, and Shaun Tan won the award for Best Artist. In related matters, there are very lively discussions underway in sf circles at present regarding whether Tan's The Arrival can be considered a work of fiction - and if so which category - or non-fiction for next year's Hugo Awards. I'd suggest it is very likely he will appear on the ballot somewhere.
At the recent 2007 Frankfurt International Book Fair it was announced that "Australian writer Michelle de Kretser, born in Colombo. Sri Lanka, was awarded the LiBeratur-award for the German edition of her book The Hamilton Case, previously published in English with Little, Brown and Company, New York. The LiBeratur-award for an outstanding publication of a woman from Africa, Asia and Latin America in German language in the previous year, was awarded for the 20th time."
Anne Enright has been announced as the winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize for her novel The Gathering. Howard Davies, chair of the panel, described it as "an unflinching look at a grieving family in tough and striking language". Enright won from a shortlist that also included:
Darkmans - Nicola Barker
The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones
On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan
Animal's People - Indra Sinha
Hardly seems like the 2007 instalment is barely over before the 2008 version opens up. Nominations are now being called for the 2008 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. Closing date is November 9th.
Doris Lessing has been awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming, I believe, the second science fiction writer to do so.
The winners of the 2007 NSW Premier's History Awards were announced last night in Sydney.
Australian History Prize
How a Continent Created a Nation by Libby Robin
Community and Regional History Prize
Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia by Regina Ganter
General History Prize
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark
Young People's History Prize
Songlines and Stone Axes: Transport, Trade and Travel in Australia by John Nicholson
John and Patricia Ward History Prize
In the Interest of National Security: Civilian Internment in Australia During World War II by Klaus Neumann
The Audio/Visual History Prize
The Archive Project: the Realist Film Unit in Cold War Australia by John Hughes
The nominations for the 2008 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the world's richest children's and youth literature award, have been released.
Nominations from Australia: Sonya Hartnett and John Marsden
Previous winners of the award have included Philip Pullman and Maurice Sendak. The winner of the 2008 award will be announced in mid-March 2008.
Les Murray may be on the second row of betting of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature but we can say that Australia has won one major Nobel prize this year: the Ig Nobel Prize for Literature.
For those not aware of this award, it's aim is to reward research that should never be repeated. In previous years Australians have won for research into belly-button lint, and for a paper about the physics of dragging sheep across shearing-shed floors. In other words, it's a light-hearted look at the world of research and is always every popular. This year Glenda Browne of Blaxland, Blue Mountains, Australia, won the Ig Nobel Prize for Literature for her study of the word "the" -- and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.
REFERENCE: "The Definite Article: Acknowledging 'The' in Index Entries," Glenda Browne, The Indexer, vol. 22, no. 3 April 2001, pp. 119-22. The article is available for viewing
on the web. [PDF file.]
Markus Zusak has won the 2007 Exclusive Books Boeke Prize for his novel, The Book Thief. The winner of the award was "chosen by a panel of 38 judges representing book critics from the South African media who were called upon to decide which of the eight shortlisted titles they considered to be impossible to put down, a compelling story that is highly accessible to all book lovers."
The NSW Premier's History Awards were established by the New South Wales Government in 1997 to honour distinguished achievement in history by Australians. The Awards are conducted in association with the History Council of New South Wales. The shortlisted works for the 2007 Award were announced in early September. The nominated works are:
Australian History Prize
Violence & Colonial Dialogue: The Australian-Pacific Indentured Labour Trade by Tracey Banivanua-Mar
Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia's First Black Settlers by Cassandra Pybus
How a Continent Created a Nation by Libby Robin
Community and
Regional History Prize
Darby: One Hundred Years of Life in a Changing Culture by Liam Campbell
Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia by Regina Ganter
A History of New South Wales by Beverley Kingston
General History Prize
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark
To Exercise Our Talents: The Democratization of Writing in Britain by Christopher Hilliard
Pistols! Treason! Murder! The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy by Jonathan Walker
Young People's History Prize
Kokoda Track: 101 Days by Peter Macinnis
Songlines and Stone Axes: Transport, Trade and Travel in Australia by John Nicholson
Joan of Arc: The Story of Jehanne Darc by Lily Wilkinson
John and Patricia Ward History Prize
Violence & Colonial Dialogue: The Australian-Pacific Indentured Labour Trade by Tracey Banivanua-Mar
Trustees on Trial: Recovering the Stolen Wages by Rosalind Kidd
In the Interest of National Security: Civilian Internment in Australia During World War II by Klaus Neumann
The winners will be announced on October 9.
Entries for the 2008 Barbara Jefferis Award are being sought. This was the major award href="http://www.middlemiss.org/weblog/archives/matilda/2007/04/new_australian_3.html">announced by the Australian Society of Authors back in early April. The award is offered annually for "the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women or girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society." Entries close Friday 30th November 2007, and the winner will be announced on Saturday 8th March 2008, International Women's Day. Further details regarding how to enter are available on the application form. [Note: PDF file.]
Stefan Laszczuk has been named as the winner of the 2007 The Australian/Vogel Award, for an unpublished manuscript for an Australian writer under the age of 35, for his novel titled I Dream of Magda. The award carries prizemoney of $20,000 and a publishing contract.
The winners of the 2007 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards have been announced. It appears that this was the last official function attended by retiring premier Peter Beattie.
Unpublished Indigenous Writer - The David Unaipon Award
Elizabeth Eileen Hodgson for Skin Paintings
Poetry Collection - Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award
Dr Laurie Duggan for The Passenger (University of Queensland Press)
Australian Short Story Collection - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award
David Malouf for Every Move You Make (Random House UK)
Film Script - Pacific Film and Television Commission Award
Joel Anderson for Lake Mungo (Mungo Productions Pty Ltd)
Television Script - QUT Creative Industries Award
Sue Smith for Bastard Boys (Flying Cabbage Productions)
Non-Fiction Book Award
Professor Tom Griffiths for Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica (New South / UNSW Press)
Science Writer - Department of State Development Award
Dr Richard Smith for Crude (ABC Television)
History Book Award
Christopher Clark for Iron Kingdom (Allen Lane, Penguin Books)
Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate - The Harry Williams Award Chris Masters for Jonestown (Allen & Unwin)
Children's Book - The Dymocks Literacy Foundation
Glenda Millard for Layla Queen of Hearts (ABC Books)
Young Adult Book Award
Judith Clarke for One Whole and Perfect Day (Allen & Unwin)
Drama Script (Stage) Award
Campion Decent for "Embers" (HotHouse Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company)
Fiction Book Award
Alexis Wright for Carpentaria (Giramondo Publishing)
Emerging Queensland Author - Manuscript Award
Ian Commins for Life in the Bus Lane
The shortlisted works for The Australian/Vogel Award have been announced.
She Played Elvis by Shady Cosgrove
Conditions of Return by Daniel Ducrou
I Dream of Magda by Stefan Laszczuk
Memory Vertigo by Michael Sala
The Homocidal Nerd by Jason Spongberg
The winner will be announced this Thursday, 13th September. Just as a reminder, this award is given to the writer of an unpublished work of fiction, biography or history under the age of 35.
The shortlist for the 2007 Man Booker Prize has been announced.
Darkmans - Nicola Barker
The Gathering - Anne Enright
The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones
On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan
Animal's People - Indra Sinha
The winner will be announced on Tuesday 16th October. Our guess? Mister Pip.
The winners of the 2007 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards have been announced.
The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction
Voyages to the South Seas: In Search of Terres Australes by Danielle Clode
The CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry
Jack by Judy Johnson
The Louis Esson Prize for Drama
A Single Act by Jane Brodie
The Prize for Young Adult Fiction
Notes from the Teenage Underground by Simmone Howell
The Prize for Science Writing
The Silent Deep by Tony Koslow
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
The Writer in a Time of Terror by Frank Moorhouse
The Village Roadshow Prize for Screen Writing
The Tumbler by Chris Thompson
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
The Ghost Writer by Nick Gadd
The Grollo Ruzzene Foundation Prize for Writing About Italians in Australia
Madonna of the Eucalypts by Karen Sparnon
The John Curtin Prize for Journalism
Muslim Leader Blames Women for Sex Attacks (plus associated stories) by Richard Kerbaj
The winners of the 2007 Ned Kelly Awards were announced last night as part of the Melbourne Writers' Festival.
Best Novel
Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher
Best First Novel
Diamond Dove by Adrian Hyland
Best True Crime
Killing for Pleasure: The Definitive Story of the Snowtown Murders by Debi Marshall
Written on the Skin by Liz Porter
Lifetime Achievement Award
Sandra Harvey and Lindsay Simpson
The winners of the 2007 "The Age" Book of the Year Awards have been announced.
Fiction
Every Move You Make by David Malouf
Non-Fiction
Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy by Peter Cochrane
Poetry
The Goldfinches of Baghdad by Robert Adamson
The Book of the Year, that is, the best of the best, was announced as Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy by Peter Cochrane.
The shortlisted works for the 2007 The Age Book of the Year Awards have been announced.
Fiction
The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll
Sucked In by Shane Maloney
Every Move You Make by David Malouf
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
Non-Fiction
Back from the Brink: How Australia's Landscape Can Be Saved by Peter Andrews
The Great War by Les Carlyon
Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy by Peter Cochrane
Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica by Tom Griffiths
Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung
Poetry
The Goldfinches of Baghdad by Robert Adamson
The Passenger by Laurie Duggan
El Dorado by Dorothy Porter
Earthly Delights by S.K. Kelen
Picnic by Fay Zwicky
The winners in each category, as well as The Book of the Year, will be presented at the Melbourne Town Hall on August 24 before Clive James delivers the opening address of the 2007 Melbourne Writers' Festival.
[Update: I inadvertently left Carpentaria out of the fiction category. Put it down to incompetence.]
The shortlists for the 2007 Premier's Queensland Literary Awards have been released. The winners will be anounced on Tuesday 11th September.
Unpublished Indigenous Writer - The David Unaipon Award
Elizabeth Eileen Hodgson for Skin Paintings
Jeanine Leane for Dark Secrets and Solid Wisdom
Lorraine McGee-Sippel for Toots
Nicole Louise Watson for Return of the Clever Man
Poetry Collection - Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award
Robert Adamson for The Goldfinches of Baghdad (Flood Editions)
Dr Laurie Duggan for The Passenger (University of Queensland Press)
Emeritus Professor Tom Shapcott for City of Empty Rooms (Salt Publishing)
Petra White for The Incoming Tide (John Leonard Press)
Australian Short Story Collection - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award
Cate Kennedy for Dark Roots (Scribe)
Margo Lanagan for Red Spikes (Allen & Unwin)
David Malouf for Every Move You Make (Random House UK)
Ryan O'Neill for A Famine in Newcastle (Ginninderra Press)
Film Script - Pacific Film and Television Commission Award
Joel Anderson for Lake Mungo (Mungo Productions Pty Ltd)
Shayne Armstrong, Shane P Krause and John Hewitt for Acolytes (Stewart & Wall Entertainment)
Brendan Cowell and Anthony Hayes for Ten Empty (Yeah Right Pty Ltd)
Peter Duncan for Unfinished Sky (New Holland Productions)
Chris Thompson for The Tumbler (Mondayitis / Ztudio)
Television Script - QUT Creative Industries Award
Michelle Offen for East West 101 Episode 5 "Haunted by the Past" (Knapman Wyld Television)
Fiona Seres for Episode 8 "Dangerous" (Southern Star Entertainment)
Sue Smith for Bastard Boys (Flying Cabbage Productions)
Keith Thompson for Lockie Leonard Human Torpedo Episode 26 "Joy to the World" (RB Films)
Non-Fiction Book Award
Professor Tom Griffiths for Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica (New South / UNSW Press)
Robert Hughes for Things I Didn't Know (Random House Australia)
Chris Masters for Jonestown (Allen & Unwin)
Science Writer - Department of State Development Award
Dr Stephen Juan for The Odd Body 3 (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
Mike Morwood and Penny Van Oosterzee for The Discovery of the Hobbit (Random House Australia)
Peter Martin for Killing Us Softly - Australia's Green Stalkers (CRC for Australian Weed Management)
Dr Richard Smith for Crude (ABC Television)
History Book Award
Christopher Clark for Iron Kingdom (Allen Lane, Penguin Books)
Ken Inglis for Whose ABC? The Australian Broadcasting Commission 1983-2006 (Blake Inc)
Dr Philip Jones for Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers (Wakefield Press Pty Ltd)
Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate - The Harry Williams Award
Professor Frank Brennan for Acting on Conscience: How can we responsibly mix law religion and politics (University of Queensland Press)
Richard Flanagan for "Gunns - Out of Control" (The Monthly)
Jonathan Holmes for "What Price Global Warming - Earth, Wind Fire" (4 Corners ABC Television)
Chris Masters for Jonestown (Allen & Unwin)
Noel Pearson for Whiteguilt, Victimhood and the Quest for a Radical Centre (Griffith University and ABC Books)
Children's Book - The Dymocks Literacy Foundation
Catherine Bateson for Being Bee (University of Queensland Press)
Pat Flynn for The Tuckshop Kid (University of Queensland Press)
Glenda Millard and Dr Gaye Chapman for Kaito's Cloth (Scholastic Australia)
Glenda Millard for Layla Queen of Hearts (ABC Books)
Young Adult Book Award
Judith Clarke for One Whole and Perfect Day (Allen & Unwin)
Melina Marchetta for On the Jellicoe Road (Penguin Group Australia)
David Metzenthen for Black Water (Penguin Group Australia)
Shaun Tan for The Arrival (Hachette Livre Australia)
Drama Script (Stage) Award
Stephen Carleton for "Constance Drinkwater and the Final Days of Somerset" (Queensland Theatre Company)
Stephen Carleton for "The Narcissist" (La Boite Theatre Company)
Campion Decent for "Embers" (HotHouse Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company)
Kit Lazaroo for "Asylum" (La Mama Theatre)
Tommy Murphy for "Holding the Man" (Griffin Theatre Company and Sydney Opera House)
Fiction Book Award
David Malouf for Every Move You Make (Random House UK)
Andrew McGahan for Underground (Allen & Unwin)
Professor Janette Turner Hospital for Orpheus Lost (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
Alexis Wright for Carpentaria (Giramondo Publishing)
Emerging Queensland Author - Manuscript Award
Ian Commins for Life in the Bus Lane
Krissy Kneen for Paper Dolls, Holding Hands
Lee McGowan for Some Tartan Hyde
I had thought the Children's Book Council of Australia awards weren't being announced until tomorrow but "Read Alert", the weblog about youth literature from the State Library of Victoria has a listing of the winners out already.
Book of the Year: Older Readers
Lanagan, Margo Red Spikes Allen & Unwin
Honour Books: Older Readers
Cornish, D. M. Monster Blood Tattoo: Book One Foundling Omnibus, Scholastic
Dubosarsky, Ursula The Red Shoe Allen & Unwin
Book of the Year: Younger Readers
Bateson, Catherine Being Bee University of Queensland Press
Honour Books: Younger Readers
Flynn, Pat Illus: Jellett, Tom The Tuckshop Kid University of Queensland Press
Laguna, Sofie Bird & Sugar Boy Penguin Books
Book of the Year: Early Childhood
Gleeson, Libby Illus: Blackwoood, Freya Amy & Louis Scholastic Press
Honour Books: Early Childhood
Costain, Meredith Illus: Allen, Pamela Doodledum Dancing Penguin/Viking
Wild, Margaret Illus: Niland, Deborah Chatterbox Penguin/Viking
Picture Book of the Year
Tan, Shaun The Arrival Lothian Books
Honour Books: Picture Book of the Year
Rippin, Sally Text: Metzenthen, David The Rainbirds Lothian Books
Spudvilas, Anne Text: Wild, Margaret Woolvs in the Sitee Penguin/Viking
Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
Norman, Mark The Penguin Book: Birds in Suits Black Dog Books
Honour Books: Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
Davidson, Leon Red Haze: Australians & New Zealanders in Vietnam Black Dog Books
Fenton, Corinne Illus: Gouldthorpe, Peter Queenie: One Elephant's Story Black Dog Books
The shortlists for the 2007 World Fantasy Awards have been released. The winners will be announced at the 2007 World Fantasy Convention over the weekend of November 1-4, in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Nominated this year are Margo Lanagan in the category of Best Collection, for Red Spikes, and Shaun Tan in the cateory of Best Artist.
The shortlists for the 2007 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards have been released. The winners will be announced on Monday 3rd September.
The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll
Feather Man by Rhyll McMaster
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction
Voyages to the South Seas: In Search of Terres Australes by Danielle Clode
Whose ABC? The Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1983-2006 by Ken Inglis
Life Class: The Education of a Biographer by Brenda Niall
Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung
Writing Never Arrives Naked: Early Aboriginal Cultures of Writing in Australia by Penny van Toorn
The CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry
The Goldfinches of Baghdad by Robert Adamson
Jack by Judy Johnson
Montale by John Watson
The Louis Esson Prize for Drama
A Single Act by Jane Brodie
Asylum by Kit Lazaroo
It Just Stopped by Stephen Sewell
The Prize for Young Adult Fiction
Gravity by Scot Gardner
Notes from the Teenage Underground by Simmone Howell
Black Water by David Metzenthen
The Prize for Science Writing
The Silent Deep by Tony Koslow
Swimming in Stone: The Amazing Gogo Fossiles of the Kimberley by John Long
Climate Change: Turning Up the Heat by A. Barrie Pittock
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
The Exiled Child by Meera Atkinson
Voting for Jesus by Amanada Lohrey
The Writer in a Time of Terror by Frank Moorhouse
White Guilt, Victimhood and the Quest for a Radical Centre by Noel Pearson
The Village Roadshow Prize for Screen Writing
The Home Song Stories by Tony Ayres
The Tumbler by Chris Thompson
Ten Empty by Brendan Cowell and Anthony Hayes
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
The Ghost Writer by Nick Gadd
Dissection by Jacinta Halloran
The Wog Manual by Amra Pajalic
The Grollo Ruzzene Foundation Prize for Writing About Italians in Australia
Chewing Gum in Holy Water by Cheryl Hardacre and Mario Valentini
The Grand Experiment: Two Boys, Two Cultures by Anouk Ride
Madonna of the Eucalypts by Karen Sparnon
The John Curtin Prize for Journalism
Hicks on Trial by Jenny Brockie and Amanda Collinge
Cruising: On Board P&O and Inside the Brimble Inquest by Malcolm Knox
Muslim Leader Blames Women for Sex Attacks (plus associated stories) by Richard Kerbaj
The Longlist for the 2007 Man Booker Prize has been announced.
Darkmans by Nicola Barker (Fourth Estate)
Self Help by Edward Docx (Picador)
The Gift Of Rain by Tan Twan Eng (Myrmidon)
The Gathering by Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton)
The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies (Sceptre)
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (John Murray)
Gifted by Nikita Lalwani (Viking)
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, (Jonathan Cape)
What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn (Tindal Street)
Consolation by Michael Redhill (William Heinemann)
Animal's People by Indra Sinha (Simon & Schuster)
Winnie & Wolf by AN Wilson (Hutchinson)
I haven't been paying a lot of attention to this over the past twelve months, so most of the books here are completely new to me. From coverage that I have seen, you'd have to expect that Jones and McEwan will be vying hard for the final prize.
But I am starting to wonder about the need for the longlist. The concept was first introduced to the Man Booker Prize in 2001. Since then the number of books on the longlist has looked like this:
2001 - 18
2002 - 14
2003 - 17
2004 - 22
2005 - 17
2006 - 19
And this year we are down to 13. Surely there were more books than that that deserved to be in the final reckoning; none from the Miles Franklin Award shortlist you'll notice. I'll grant you that 22 in 2004 was a tad high, but 13? It'll be interesting to look through this list a little more thoroughly. There's a few lines of thought I'd like to follow up.
A few weeks late, but M.J. Hyland has been awarded the 2007 Hawthornden Prize, worth £10,000, for her novel Carry Me Down. The novel was also shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker prize and the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
"The Sydney Morning Herald" is reporting that Australian author Bronwyn Clarke has won the Romance Writers of America (RWA) Golden Heart contest for unpublished manuscripts, for her novel Falling into Darkness . Needless to say she is working on a sequel - good move - and has her manuscript under consideration.
Clarke's win follows that of Marion Lennox, who won the Best Traditional Romance
category of the 2006 Romance Writers of America Rita awards, for her novel Princess of Convenience.
The winners of the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards were announced last week, and the full list is now available (PDF File):
Australian Chain Bookseller of the Year
Dymocks Garden City (Booragoon)
Australian Independent Bookseller of the Year
Riverbend Bookshop
Australian Distributor of the Year
Alliance Distribution Services
Australian Distributor of the Year
Jonestown by Chris Masters, published by Allen & Unwin
Australian Small Publisher of the Year
Black Inc
Australian Export Success of the Year
Scholastic Australia for Monster Blood Tattoo Trilogy by D.M. Cornish
Australian Illustrated Book of the Year
My French Life by Vicki Archer, published by Penguin Group Australia
Australian Biography of the Year
Jonestown by Chris Masters, published by Allen & Unwin
Australian General Non-Fiction Book of the Year
The Great War by Les Carlyon, published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Australian Book of the Year for Younger Children (age range 0 to 8 years)
Josephine Wants to Dance by Jackie French, published by HarperCollins Publishers
Australian Book of the Year for Older Children (age range 8 to 14 years)
The Arrival by Shaun Tan, published by Hachette Livre Australia
Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright, published by Giramondo Publishing
Australian General Fiction Book of the Year
The Shifting Fog by Kate Morton, published by Allen & Unwin
Australian Newcomer of the Year (debut writer)
Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung, published by Black Inc.
Australian Book of the Year
The Great War by Les Carlyon, published by Pan Macmillan Australia
The Lloyd O'Neil Award for outstanding service to the Australian book industry
Peter Field
Pixie O'Harris Award for distinguished and dedicated service to the development and reputation of Australian children's books
Agnes Nieuwenhuizen
Publisher of the Year Award
Allen & Unwin
[Update reason: the full list is now available on the website.]
Bookseller of the Year, Australian Marketing Campaign of the Year, and Australian Distributor of the Year.
Damien, on his "Crime Down under" weblog, has reported that the shortlists for the 2007 Ned Kelly Awards have been released.
Best Crime Novel
Chain of Evidence - Gary Disher (Text)
The Night Ferry - Michael Robotham (Little Brown)
The Unknown Terrorist - Richard Flanagan (Macmillan)
The Cleaner - Paul Cleave (Random House)
Undertow - Peter Corris (Allen & Unwin)
Spider Trap - Barry Maitland (Allen & Unwin)
Best First Crime Novel
The Betrayal of Bindi Mackenzie - Jaclyn Moriaty (Macmillan)
Diamond Dove - Adrian Hyland (Text)
Better Dead Than Never - Laurent Boulanger (C& C International Media Group)
Behind the Night Bazaar - Angela Savage (Text)
Best True Crime
Justice For The Dead - Malcolm Dodd and Beverly Knight (Hachette Livre)
Overboard: The Stories Cruise Ships Don't Want Told - Gywn Topham (Random House)
Intractable - Bernie Matthews (Macmillan)
Written On The Skin - Liz Porter (Macmillan)
Silent Death - Karen Kissane (Hachette Livre)
Australian Outlaw - Derek Pedley (Sly Ink)
Killing For Pleasure: The Definitive Story of the Snowtown Murders - Debi Marshall (Random House)
The Dodger - Duncan McNab (Macmillan)
Things A Killer Would Know - Paula Doneman (Allen & Unwin)
The awards will be presented during the upcoming Melbourne Writers' Festival on August 29th at 6:00pm.
The shortlists for the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards have been announced [PDF file].
Australian Chain Bookseller of the Year
NSW/ACT Dymocks Sydney
Qld Dymocks Indooroopilly
SA/NT Dymocks Rundle Mall
Tas Dymocks Hobart
Vic Dymocks Camberwell
WA Dymocks Garden City (Booragoon)
Australian Independent Bookseller of the Year
NSW/ACT Gleebooks
Qld Riverbend Bookshop
SA/NT Imprints Booksellers
Tas Fullers Hobart
Vic Avenue Bookstore
WA Boffins Bookshop
Australian Small Publisher of the Year
Black Dog Books
Black Inc
Giramondo Publishing Company
Jamie Durie Publishing
Scribe Publications
Australian Distributor of the Year
Alliance Distribution Services
Harper Entertainment Distribution Services
Macmillan Distribution Services
Random House Australia
United Book Distributors
Australian Marketing Campaign of the Year
Every Day by Bill Granger, published by Murdoch Books
Jonestown by Chris Masters, published by Allen & Unwin
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, published by Penguin Group Australia
The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult, published by Allen & Unwin
Zac Power: Lunar Strike by H.I. Larry, published by Hardie Grant Egmont
Australian Export Success of the Year
Black Dog Books for Dragon Keeper Trilogy by Carole Wilkinson
Scholastic Australia for Monster Blood Tattoo Trilogy by D.M. Cornish
The Text Publishing Company for The Broken Shore by Peter Temple
The Text Publishing Company for The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery
Australian Illustrated Book of the Year
Every Day by Bill Granger, published by Murdoch Books
Garden of a Lifetime by Anne Latreille, published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Keeping Culture: Aboriginal Tasmania edited by Amanda Reynolds, published by National Museum of Australia
Matt Moran by Matt Moran, published by Penguin Group Australia
My French Life by Vicki Archer, published by Penguin Group Australia
Australian Biography of the Year
A Thinking Reed by Barry Jones, published by Allen & Unwin
Florence Broadhurst by Helen O'Neill, published by Hardie Grant Australia
Jonestown by Chris Masters, published by Allen & Unwin
My Story by General Peter Cosgrove, published by HarperCollins Publishers
Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung, published by Black Inc.
Australian General Non-Fiction Book of the Year
Agamemnon's Kiss: Selected Essays by Inga Clendinnen, published by The Text Publishing Company
Inhaling the Mahatma by Christopher Kremmer, published by HarperCollins Publishers
Silencing Dissent edited by Clive Hamilton & Sarah Maddison, published by Allen & Unwin
The Great War by Les Carlyon, published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Tobruk by Peter FitzSimmons, published by HarperCollins Publishers
Australian Book of the Year for Younger Children (age range 0 to 8 years)
A Particular Cow by Mem Fox, illustrated by Terry Denton, published by Penguin Group Australia
Josephine Wants to Dance by Jackie French, published by HarperCollins Publishers
The Australian Twelve Days of Christmas by Heath McKenzie, published by Black Dog Books
The Cat on the Mat is Flat by Andy Griffiths, published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Uno's Garden by Graeme Base, published by Penguin Group Australia
Australian Book of the Year for Older Children (age range 8 to 14 years)
On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta, published by Penguin Group Australia
Rose By Any Other Name by Maureen McCarthy, published by Allen & Unwin
Ten Things I Hate About Me by Randa Abdel-Fattah, published by Pan Macmillan Australia
The Arrival by Shaun Tan, published by Hachette Livre Australia
We Are the Weather Makers: Story of Global Warming by Tim Flannery, published by The Text Publishing Company
Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year
Careless by Deborah Robertson, published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright, published by Giramondo Publishing
Every Move You Make by David Malouf, published by Random House
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey, published by Random House
Underground by Andrew McGahan, published by Allen & Unwin
Australian General Fiction Book of the Year
Cents & Sensibility by Maggie Alderson, published by Penguin Group Australia
Cricket Kings by William McInnes, published by Hachette Livre Australia
The Harsh Cry of the Heron by Lian Hearn, published by Hachette Livre Australia
The Shifting Fog by Kate Morton, published by Allen & Unwin
The Valley by Di Morrissey, published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Australian Newcomer of the Year (debut writer)
Blowing My Own Trumpet by James Morrison, published by Murdoch Books
Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch, published by University of Queensland Press
The Shifting Fog by Kate Morton, published by Allen & Unwin
Undertow by Sydney Bauer, published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung, published by Black Inc.
Australian Book of the Year
A Thinking Reed by Barry Jones, published by Allen & Unwin
Jonestown by Chris Masters, published by Allen & Unwin
The Arrival by Shaun Tan, published by Hachette Livre Australia
The Great War by Les Carlyon, published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung, published by Black Inc.
The winners in these 15 categories, along with the Lloyd O'Neil Award, the Pixie O' Harris Award and the Australian Publisher of the Year Award, will be announced at the ABIA presentation dinner on Tuesday 24th July 2007.
The 2007 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal has been awarded to Alexis Wright for her novel Carpentaria, which, you recall, also won this year's Miles Franklin Award.
Peter Temple has been announced as the winner of 2007 Duncan Lawrie Dagger award in the UK, for his novel The Broken Shore. Formerly known as the Golden Dagger, the award is presented each year by the Crime Writers' Association and is worth some $47,000 to the winner. Temple is the first Australian writer to be shortlisted for the award, and this should prove a massive boost to his sales in Europe.
"Australian Book Review" and the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) have announced that the second Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay is now open. Prizemoney for the winner is $10,000 and entries close on August 31 2007. The winner will be announced in December 2007.
The winners of the 2006 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards have been announced.
Premier's Prize
Shaun Tan - The Arrival
Fiction
Simone Lazaroo - The Travel Writer
Poetry
Dennis Haskell - All the Time in the World
Non-Fiction
Quentin Beresford - Rob Riley: an Aboriginal Leader's Quest for Justice; and
Peter Edwards - Arthur Tange: Last of the Mandarins
West Australian History Award
Bobbie Oliver and Patrick Bertola - The Workshops: A History of the Midland Government Railway Workshops
Children's Books
Shaun Tan - The Arrival
Young Adult's Books
Kate McCaffrey - Destroying Avalon
Scripts
Hellie Turner - "Sardines"
So, Shaun Tan goes from strength to strength.
Romana Kaval interviewed Giromondo Press publisher, Ivor Indyk, on ABC Radio National's "The Book Show", the morning after Carpentaria, written by Alexis Wright and published by his company, won the 2007 Miles Franklin Award.
Interesting to hear Indyk say that such a win can make life very difficult for a small publisher: receipts from sales lag invoices from printers by four months, which messes with cash-flows something fierce.
The radio program also replayed an interview with Wright from November 2006.
Given that I didn't even know this prize existed, it came as a bit of a shock this morning to see in "The Age" that Les Carlyon had been presented with the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History for his book, The Great War. This was not an "OMG" shock, more a "what the...?"
Actually Carlyon was the joint winner of the inaugral award, sharing the $100,000 prize with David Cochrane for his book Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy.
[Update: it appears that blindly following the mass media is not the best course of action at times. The correct name of the joint winner of this award, as pointed out by Brian Hoepper in an attached comment, was Dr Peter Cochrane. My apologies for the error. You can find further details of the award, including the other shortlisted works at the official website.]
The AAP report, which was picked up by "The Age" and "The Brisbane Times", quotes winner Alexis Wright as saying "It took two years to understand how I could write (Carpentaria) and a good six years to write it with a number of early attempts thrown away". She pays tribute to her publisher, Giramondo, who took a risk with the novel when a number of major publishers had passed on the work.
The first I heard of the win last night was on ABC TV's "The 7:30 Report" when it was announced by Kerry O'Brien. This was followed by an interview with the author which you can now read, or watch.
Susan Wyndham, in "The Sydney Morning Herald", quotes judge Morag Fraser about the novel's narrator, who "is very original and very brave - a bit like creating Huckleberry Finn's voice".
Alexis Wright has been announced as the winner of the 2007 Miles Franklin Award, for her novel Carpentaria.
I actually put this decision down to me. It's the only one of the four shortlisted novels I haven't either read or started. In 2006, Roger McDonald's novel was the only one I hadn't got to. In 2005, I read all the shortlisted works and picked the winner, so I see a pattern here, even if no-one else does.
But anyway, from all reports Wright is a worthy winner. The shortlisted novels were:
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
With the 2007 Miles Franklin Award winner due to be announced on Thursday 21st June, Jason Steger, in "The Age", looks at the prize and this year's contenders.
His conclusion: "If originality were the key to the prize, Wright might have it stitched up. Indeed, most people around the books traps seem to think she is a shoo-in. That remains to be seen. As Peter Carey has said umpteen times, literary prizes are a lottery."
Just as a reminder the shortlisted works are:
Theft by Peter Carey
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
"The Australian" examines what it means to win a major literary prize in Australia, concentrating on the Miles Franklin and "Australian"/Vogel Awards.
Rosemary Sorenson gives a fair rundown on the past history of the awards, stopping along the way to comment on those winners who seem to have disappeared with trace: writers such as Elizabeth O'Conner who won the Miles Franklin in 1960 with The Irishman, and Christopher Matthews, Fotini Epanomitis, and Jim Sakkas who all won the Vogel only to slip from view as fast as they arrived.
Michael Heywood, of Text Publishing, has a few interesting things to say about prizes in general along with the news that his publishing house is in the process of finalising details of yet another. I keep suggesting a prize for a first novel by an author over the age of 40, but no-one listens.
The nominated works for the 2007 International Horror Guild Awards have been announced and this year two Australian authors have been featured.
The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott has been nominated for the Best Novel award (up against Stephen King's Lisey's Story), and Terry Dowling has been nominated twice: for "Cheat Light" in the Short Fiction category, and for Basic Black in the Collection category.
This year's awards will be presented Thursday evening, November 1, 2007 during the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, New York.
[Thanks to Horrorscope for the link.]
Out Stealing Horses, by Norwegian author Per Petterson, has been announced as the 12th winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
The 2007 Ditmar Awards (otherwise known as the Australian Science Fiction Achievement Awards), were presented at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention, Convergence 2, over this past weekend.
The major winners were:
Novel
The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliot, ABC Books
Novella/Novelette
"The Devil in Mr Pussy (Or How I Found God Inside My Wife)" by Paul Haines, C0ck, Couer de Lion Publishing
Short Story
"The Fear of White" by Rjurik Davidson, Borderlands #7
Collected Work
The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy Vol. 2, edited by Bill Congreve & Michelle Marquardt, Mirrordanse Books
Professional Artwork
Andrew MacRae - 26Lies/1Truth cover art, Wheatland Press
Professional Achievement
Bill Congreve for Mirrordanse Books and two issues of the Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology.
You can see a full list of the awards here.
Chinua Achebe has been announced as the winner of the 2007 Man Booker International Prize. This prize is awarded each two years and honours a body of work rather than a single novel.
Andrew Denton, host of the ABC TV interview show Enough Rope, has launched the Kit Denton Fellowship in honour of his late father. The $25,000 fellowship will be awarded each year to reward courage in performance writing. It's aim is to allow a writer a full year to develop their work.
Kit Denton was the author of the 1973 novel The Breaker, based on the life and death of Breaker Morant.
Damien, on the "Crime Down Under" weblog, has reported that the nominees for the 2007 Ned Kelly Awards have been released. These awards recognise Australian crime fiction, and are presented in three categories: Best Crime Fiction, Best First Crime Novel, and Best True Crime. The winners will be announced during The Age Melbourne Writers' Festival in August/September. Must see if I can get along this year.
The winners of the 2007 NSW Premier's Literary Awards have been announced. The shortlisted works for the awards are also listed on the website.
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($20,000)
Peter Carey, Theft: a Love Story, Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Douglas Stewart Prize for Non Fiction ($20,000)
Robert Hughes, Things I Didn't Know: a Memoir, Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($15,000)
John Tranter, Urban Myths: 210 Poems, University of Queensland Press
Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature ($15,000)
Narelle Oliver, Home, Omnibus Books
Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature ($15,000)
Ursula Dubosarsky, The Red Shoe, Allen & Unwin
Play Award ($15,000)
Tommy Murphy, "Holding the Man" (adapted from the book by Timothy Conigrave, Griffin Theatre Company & Currency Press
Script Award ($15,000)
Tony Ayres, "The Home Song Stories", Porchlight Films & Big & Little Films
Community Relations Commission Award ($15,000)
Shaun Tan, The Arrival, Hachette Livre Australia
Gleebooks Prize for Critical Writing ($10,000)
Gideon Haigh, Asbestos House: the Secret History of James Hardie Industries, Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
UTS Award for New Writing ($5,000)
Tara June Winch, Swallow the Air, University of Queensland Press
Book of the Year (additional $2,000)
Shaun Tan, The Arrival, Hachette Livre Australia
Special Award ($5,000)
Gerald Murnane
NSW Premier's Translation Prize ($15,000) & PEN Medallion
John Nieuwenhuizen
Some interesting selections there: Carey's novel won from a field that includes all four of the works shortlisted for this year's Miles Franklin Award; and Shaun Tan winning Book of the Year. And I'm not criticising Shaun here. On the contrary, I'm shocked that the judges were able to see the worth of the work, a graphic novel with no words.
"The Age" newspaper is reporting that Lloyd Jones from New Zealand has won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, for his novel Mr Pip.
This is also a pretty good result for local Melbourne publisher Text, which published the book worldwide (except for New Zealand where Penguin had the rights) and which also published the 2006 winner, The Secret River by Kate Grenville.
The Nebula Awards are presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy writers of America (SFWA) and aim to honour the best written works in the field in a given calendar year. The 2006 awards were announced some time back (I've been rather tardy in posting about this) and it's great to see that Justine Larbalestier won the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, for her novel Magic and Madness. While not strictly speaking a Nebula, this award will carry a lot of kudos and is only the second ever presented by the SFWA. I think they're finally starting to understand the Young Adult category at last.
Anyone who has been reading this weblog for a while will realise that I consider Australian literary awards rather important. While being cogniscent of all the arguments about the nature of such "competitions", I always come down on the side of the extra publicity that is generated for a literary work when it is nominated for, and maybe wins, a literary award. Every bit helps.
Which is why it is a bit disappointing that the trustees of the Nita B. Kibble prize for women writers don't have a website set up for the award. Hunting around on the web for details of the shortlisted titles and then for the announcement of the winner has led me to newspaper reports which, due to the nature of indexing search engines, sometimes aren't "findable" for some days after an announcement.
Anyway, ranting over.
"The Australian" newspaper has reported that the winner of the 2007 Nita Kibble Award for Women Writers is Deborah Robertson for her novel Careless.
Sure is time for me to get out and read this one now.
The shortlisted works for the 2006 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted works are:
Fiction
Shadow Thief by Marion May Campbell, (Pandanus Books)
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones, (Vintage)
The Travel Writer by Simone Lazaroo, (Pan Macmillan Australia)
Careless by Deborah Robertson, (Pan Macmillan Australia)
The Music of Dunes by Mike Williams, (Fremantle Arts Centre Press)
Poetry
All the Time in the World by Dennis Haskell, (Salt Publishing)
Sacré Coeur: A Salt Tragedy by John Kinsella, (Vagabond Press)
Book of Days by Deanne Leber, (Self published)
Phosphorescence by Graeme Miles, (Fremantle Arts Centre Press)
A Difficult Faith by Mark Reid, (Fremantle Arts Centre Press)
Non-Fiction
Rob Riley: an Aboriginal Leader's Quest for Justice by Quentin Beresford, (Aboriginal Studies Press)
In The Space Behind His Eyes by Sally Clarke, (Claverton House (self))
Arthur Tange: Last of the Mandarins by Peter Edwards, (Allen & Unwin)
Learning to Dance by Elizabeth Jolley, (Penguin Books)
New Legend by Monique La Fontaine, (Kimberley Aboriginal Law & Cultural Centre)
Western Australia History Award
The Millendon Memoirs by James Cameron, (Hesperian Press)
The Workshops: A History of the Midland Government Railway Workshops by Bobbie Oliver and Patrick Bertola, (UWA Press)
Gallipoli: The Western Australian Story by Wes Olson, (UWA Press)
[Note: these books are also considered shortlisted for the Non-Fiction Award.]
Children's Books
Tai's Penguin by Raewyn Caisley, (Penguin Group (Australia))
Nathan Nuttboard Family Matters by Anthony Eaton, (University of Queensland Press)
The Catalpa Escape by Joy & Mike Lefroy and Marion Duke, (Fremantle Arts Centre Press)
Water Witcher by Jan Ormerod, (Little Hare Books)
The Shy Mala by Liliana Stafford and Sophia Zielinski, (Windy Hollow Books)
The Arrival by Shaun Tan, (Hachette Livre Australia)
Young Adult Books
No More Borders For Josef by Diana Chase, (Fremantle Arts Centre Press)
Bye, Beautiful by Julia Lawrinson, (Penguin Group (Australia))
Suburban Freak Show by Julia Lawrinson, (Hachette Livre Australia)
Destroying Avalon by Kate McCaffrey, (Fremantle Arts Centre Press)
Mama's Trippin' Katy Watson-Kell, (Fremantle Arts Centre Press)
Script
The Ships Pass Quietly by John Aitken, (Blue Room Theatre)
Marmalade and Egg by Melissa Cantwell, (Perth Theatre Co)
Episode 14 "Pure Poetry" by Sarah Rossetti, (RB Films)
Sardines by Hellie Turner, (Tropic Sun Theatre Queensland)
The Carnivores by Ian Wilding, (Black Swan Theatre Company)
The award winners will be announced at a gala dinner on Friday June 8 at the State Library of Western Australia.
"The Sydney Morning Herald" is reporting that the shortlist for the 2007 Nita B. Kibble Award for Women's Writing has been announced.
The shortlisted works include:
Agamemnon's Kiss by Inga Clendinnen
Captain Starlight's Apprentice by Kathryn Heyman
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Ida Leeson: A Life by Sylvia Martin
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Shortlisted for the Dobbie Award for a first book are:
Salvation Creek by Susan Duncan
Waterlemon by Ruth Ritchie
Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch
The winners, in both categories, will be announced in Sydney on Wednesday 9th May.
The shortlists for the 2007 NSW Premier's Award have been announced.
The shortlisted works are:
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($20,000)
James Bradley The Resurrectionist Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
Anson Cameron Lies I Told About a Girl Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
Peter Carey Theft: A Love Story Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Gail Jones Dreams of Speaking Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Deborah Robertson Careless Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
Alexis Wright Carpentaria Giramondo Publishing Company
Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction ($20,000)
Quentin Beresford Rob Riley: an Aboriginal Leader's Quest for Justice Aboriginal Studies Press
Janine Burke The Gods of Freud: Sigmund Freud's Art Collection Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Michael Gurr Days Like These Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
Robert Hughes Things I Didn't Know: a Memoir Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Sylvia Martin Ida Leeson: A Life; not a blue-stocking lady Allen & Unwin
Chris Masters Jonestown: the Power and the Myth of Alan Jones Allen & Unwin
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($15,000)
Robert Adamson The Goldfinches of Baghdad Flood Editions
Laurie Duggan The Passenger University of Queensland Press
Les Murray The Biplane Houses Black Inc.
John Tranter Urban Myths: 210 Poems University of Queensland Press
Simon West First Names Puncher and Wattmann
Fay Zwicky Picnic Giramondo Publishing Company
Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature ($15,000)
Michael Gerard Bauer Don't Call Me Ishmael! Omnibus Books
Judith Clarke One Whole and Perfect Day Allen & Unwin
Ursula Dubosarsky The Red Shoe Allen & Unwin
Barry Jonsberg Dreamrider Allen & Unwin
Michael Parker Doppelganger Penguin Group (Australia)
Shaun Tan The Arrival Hachette Livre Australia
Patricia Wrightson Prize ($15,000)
Deborah Carlyon & John Danalis (illus) Loku and the Shark Attack University of Queensland Press
Rosanne Hawke & Robert Ingpen (illus) Mustara Hachette Livre Australia
Doug MacLeod I'm Being Stalked by a Moonshadow Penguin Group (Australia)
Laurel Nannup A Story to Tell University of Western Australia Press
Narelle Oliver Home Omnibus Books
Jan Ormerod Water Witcher Little Hare Books
Community Relations Commission Award ($15,000)
Peter Browne The Longest Journey: Resettling Refugees from Africa University of NSW Press Ltd
Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen Voyage of Hope: Vietnamese Australian
Women's Narratives Common Ground Publishing Pty Ltd
Wendy Orr & Donna Rawlins (illus) Across the Dark Sea National Museum of Australia Press
Alice Pung Unpolished Gem Black Inc.
Cassandra Pybus Black Founders: the Unknown Story of Australia's First Black Settlers University of New South Wales Press Ltd
Shaun Tan The Arrival Hachette Livre Australia
Gleebooks Prize ($10,000)
Rod Barton The Weapons Detective: the Inside Story of Australia 's Top Weapons Inspector Black Inc. Agenda
Frank Brennan Acting on Conscience: How Can We Responsibly Mix Law, Religion and Politics? University of Queensland Press
Patricia Edgar Bloodbath: a Memoir of Australian Television Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
Gideon Haigh Asbestos House: the secret history of James Hardie Industries Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
K. S. Inglis Whose ABC? the Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1983-2006 Black Inc.
Antony Loewenstein My Israel Question Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
UTS Award for New Writing ($5,000)
No short list with this Award. Winner will be announced 29 May 2007
Play Award ($15,000)
Christopher Aronsten Human Resources Darlinghurst Theatre Company
Jane Bodie A Single Act University of Melbourne / MTC,
Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse
Campion Decent Embers Hothouse Theatre & Sydney Theatre Company
Jane Malone The Rumour The Crypt Theatre
Tommy Murphy Holding the Man Griffin Theatre Company / Currency Press
Debra Oswald The Peach Season Griffin Theatre Company
Script Writing Award ($15,000)
Tony Ayres The Home Song Stories Porchlight Films/ Big and Little Films
David Caesar & Fiona Seres Dangerous, Episode 7 Southern Star Entertainment P/L
Marc Rosenberg The December Boys Becker Entertainment
Keith Thompson Clubland RB Films Pty Ltd
Keith Thompson He's Coming South Animax Films Pty Ltd
Katherine Thomson Answered By Fire â€" Part Two Beyond Simpson Le Mesurier, Muse Entertainment, Terra Rossa Pictures
The NSW Premier's Translation Prize ($15,000)
May-Brit Akerholt
Harry Aveling
Christine Cornell
John Nieuwenhuizen
Simon Patton
"The Courier-Mail" carried reviews of three of the novels on the Miles Franklin Award shortlist. Which raises the question: why not all four?
Anyway, Carpentaria, by Alexis Wright, is reviewed by Diane Dempsey: "It is Wright's teasing, seductive, cackling voice which finally gives Carpentaria its authenticity... It is a voice which carries within it the knowledge and burden of her characters' history and the supremacy of spirituality to a mob of Aborigines who deem it wise to make their home on a rubbish tip in the small coastal town of Desperance in the Gulf of Carpentaria...On balance the book's sense of mischief is subdued by its epic design and poetic ambitions. It asks for patience of the reader in order to follow the meandering line of the plot...But the one thing Wright never does in this book of her people is proselytise."
Peter Carey's Theft: A Love Story is reviewed by Rosemary Sorenson: "Recklessly funny is the way the publishers have chosen to describe Peter Carey's new novel, Theft...But the 63-year-old was not, it appears, in a wholly jolly mood when he wrote his story about a fading artist and his scary half-wit brother...The clash of desires -- between naughty and censorious -- crushes this, Carey's eighth, novel...[the main] characters made for loving...That wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact they are not made properly for living either. That is, they don't come fully alive in Carey's ferocious, exhausting, adrenalin-rush blast of a novel."
And Careless, by Deborah Robertson, is examined by Bron Sibree, in what is more an interview than a review.
Peter Craven is the critic of choice this year for "The Age" to continue questioning the Miles Franklin Award and its entry criteria - last year it was Jane Sullivan on this topic. Craven's piece, on the op-ed pages of the paper, carries the title "Reward the best novel, not the most Australian one", which pretty much sums up the arguments he raises. The trouble is that is not what the prize is for. But more of that later.
Craven is one of Australia's best literary critics around and does have some interesting points to make, not that I agree with all of them. First, and foremost among them, is his statement that "The Miles Franklin has always been a bit of a litmus test for our impulse as a nation towards cultural insecurity of one form or another." The "cultural cringe" in other words. Didn't this go out with flared jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts? I'm not sure this sense of insecurity or inferiority exists much outside mainstream media these days. A similar assertion could be levelled at this weblog - the "culture insecurity" part anyway. Just because you wish to publicise one aspect of literature does not mean that you aim to diminish any other parts. It's just a means of saying "hey, look at this, you might enjoy it". It should not imply anything else. A few weeks back I quoted Neal Stephenson when he said: "Lack of critical respect means nothing to sci-fi's creators and fans. They made peace with their own dorkiness long ago." Thirty years back Ursula Le Guin called for sf to drag itself up out of the ghetto and embrace the world. She implied that by doing so it would gain the level of critical acceptance that it deserved. It took maybe ten to fifteen years for that to occur, though whether or not it gained a level of "respectability" it may also have desired is another question altogether. I, for one, tend to think it didn't. But, you know what? I also think the sf community doesn't care any more.
The same should be true of Australian literature. Each year I find that the bulk of the Miles Franklin Award shortlist could replace the novels selected for the Man Booker Prize and you wouldn't see much of a drop in quality. It's not a question of "respectability" or "critical acceptance" any more. It's now a problem with promotion and publicity. How do we get the best of Australian fiction out there in front of the world's readers? Especially when we are so far from literature's English-language hotspots of London and New York. By extolling the virtues of awards such as the Miles Franklin might be a good place to start.
Contrary to Craven's earlier statement implying that the award praises the most Australian work on the shortlist, the conditions talk of a work of literature which reflects Australians or the Australian way of life. It doesn't have to be Crocodile Dundee or Chips Rafferty, it can quite easily be Gail Jones's writer living in Paris, or Peter Carey's painter stuck in northern New South Wales attempting to paint. It's the quality that counts.
Craven concludes: "The imagination cannot be tethered by nationalism, even though the fruits of the literary imagination -- the aching, erotic nostalgia of David Malouf's Queensland, the sensuous slap of the sun on Carlton streets in Helen Garner -- may have a peculiar poignancy to us because we live in this place. It doesn't make them better, it simply makes them ours." It does not make them better, but it also doesn't make them worse either.
The Locus Awards are run by "Locus" magazine (the major newsletter of the sf and fantasy fields), and this year's finalists have been announced.
Of special interest for Australian readers is the Best Young Adult shortlists which contains two Australina novels:
The Keys to the Kingdom: Sir Thursday, Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin; The Chicken House)
Magic Lessons, Justine Larbalestier (Penguin/Razorbill)
Spirits That Walk in Shadow, Nina Kiriki Hoffman (Viking)
Voices, Ursula K. Le Guin (Orion Children's; Harcourt)
Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperTempest)
Nix and Larbalestier are up against some heavy competition in Le Guin and Pratchett, but we wish them well. Winners in all categories will be announced at a dinner held at the Science Fiction Museum's Hall of Fame, in Seattle on June 16th.
The shortlisted works for the 2007 Miles Franklin Award have been announced.
The shortlist:
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
You read it here first: author David Whish-Wilson correctly picked the full list in a comment to this weblog earlier today. Kerryn Goldsworthy picked three of the four on her weblog, but was correct in specifying that the judges would only release four works on the shortlist. I, of course, got nowhere, suggesting there might be an all-female list. Bloody Carey.
The shortlisted works for the 2007 Miles Franklin Award are due to be released tomorrow. Of the 8 novels on the longlist, 5 are by women writers. What chance they sweep all spots? Reasonably high I would suspect. I wait with high expectation for Kerryn Goldsworthy's choices after she picked the field last year. (Nothing like a little pressure to heighten the critical senses.)
The shortlisted works for the 2007 Children's Book Council of Australia - Book of the Year Awards have been announced.
Book of the Year: Older Readers
Bauer, Michael Gerard Don't Call Me Ishmael! Omnibus, Scholastic
Clarke, Judith One Whole and Perfect Day Allen & Unwin
Cornish, D. M. Monster Blood Tattoo: Book One Foundling Omnibus, Scholastic
Dubosarsky, Ursula The Red Shoe Allen & Unwin
Lanagan, Margo Red Spikes Allen & Unwin
Shanahan, Lisa My Big Birkett Allen & Unwin
Book of the Year: Younger Readers
Bateson, Catherine Being Bee University of Queensland Press
Flynn, Pat Illus: Jellett, Tom The Tuckshop Kid University of Queensland Press
French, Jackie Macbeth and Son A&R, HarperCollins
Griffiths, Andy Illus: Denton, Terry The Cat on the Mat is Flat Pan Macmillan
Laguna, Sofie Bird & Sugar Boy Penguin Books
Millard, Glenda Illus: King, Stephen Michael Layla, Queen of Hearts ABC Books
Book of the Year: Early Childhood
Allen, Pamela Grandpa and Thomas and the Green Umbrella Penguin/Viking
Costain, Meredith Illus: Allen, Pamela Doodledum Dancing Penguin/Viking
Fox, Lee Illus:Wilcox, Cathy Ella Kazoo Will Not Brush Her Hair Lothian Books
Gleeson, Libby Illus: Blackwoood, Freya Amy & Louis Scholastic Press
Lee, Lyn Illus: Gamble, Kim Eight Omnibus, Scholastic
Wild, Margaret Illus: Niland, Deborah Chatterbox Penguin/Viking
Picture Book of the Year
McKimmie, Chris Brian Banana Duck Sunshine Yellow Allen & Unwin
Oliver, Narelle Home Omnibus, Scholastic
Ormerod, Jan Water Witcher Little Hare Books
Rippin, Sally Text: Metzenthen, David The Rainbirds Lothian Books
Spudvilas, Anne Text Wild, Margaret Woolvs in the Sitee Penguin/Viking
Tan, Shaun The Arrival Lothian Books
Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
Davidson, Leon Red Haze: Australians & New Zealanders in Vietnam Black Dog Books
Fenton, Corinne Illus: Gouldthorpe, Peter Queenie: One Elephant's Story Black Dog Books
Hocknull, Scott and Cook, Alex Amazing Facts about Australian Dinosaurs Steve Parish Publishing
Hoopmann, Kathy All Cats have Asperger Syndrome Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Norman, Mark The Penguin Book: Birds in Suits Black Dog Books
Tonkin, Rachel Leaf Litter A&R, HarperCollins
The Book of the Year winners will be announced during Children's Book Week celebrations running from 18th - 24th August 2007.
The Man Booker International Prize judging panel overnight released its list of authors under consideration for the 2007 prize. The 15 authors on the list are:
Chinua Achebe
Margaret Atwood
John Banville
Peter Carey
Don DeLillo
Carlos Fuentes
Doris Lessing
Ian McEwan
Harry Mulisch
Alice Munro
Michael Ondaatje
Amos Oz
Philip Roth
Salman Rushdie
Michel Tournier
As Chris Boyd points out there isn't much cross-over with the 2005 list, which probably indicates different preferences from the judging panel more than anything else. This prize awards a body of work by an author, rather than a specific book, it is awarded every 2 years and is open to all authors worldwide. While there doesn't seem to be any specific date mentioend for the announcement of the prize winner, we can expect to hear the news in June if the 2005 prize is anything to go on.
The shortlist for the 2007 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has been announced. J.M. Coetzee's novel Slow Man is the only Australian novel on the list.
[Thanks to the Literary Saloon at the complete review for the note.]
The nominations for the 2007 Ditmar Awards (best Australian sf and fantasy) have been released. Voting is restricted to members of the 2007 National Science Fiction Convention, Convergence 2, which will be held in Melbourne over the weekend of June 8-11th.
East of Time, by Jacob Rosenberg, has been announced as the winner of the 2007 ational Biography Award.
"The Sydney Morning Herald" is reporting that the Australian Society of Authors announced its new Australian literary award over the weekend. The award, to be worth at least $35,000, will be presented each year to "the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society. The novel may be in any genre and it is not necessary for it to be set in Australia." The first year of the award will be 2008, though no details of the required publication dates have been released.
Is this just an Australian attempt to emulate the Orange Prize, but giving it a slight twist by emulating the Miles Franklin Award and restricting the subject matter? And what do they mean by "positive"? On first blush, I'm a bit underwhelmed by this.
No, this isn't another rant from me about who should and who should not be eligible for the Miles Franklin Award. It's just a query about a note I saw in the paper on the weekend.
Jason Steger, literary editor of "The Age" and panellist on ABC TV's "The First Tuesday book Club", has a column each weekend in the book pages called "Bookmarks" (not on the web). This week he included, under the heading "Hyland's consolation" the following paragraph: "Written in Melbourne by a writer who lived in Melbourne for many years and developed her writing talent here, but not eligible for the Miles Franklin, Australia's most significant literary prize, M.J. Hyland's Carry Me Down was entered for the award but didn't feature on the longlist announced last week." The consolation was that Hyland was included on the longlist for the Orange Prize.
But that's not the point. The point actually relates to the "but not eligible for the Miles Franklin" phrase. I'm not sure if the writer is referring to the author or the novel here. If to the novel, then he is correct. If to the author then this infers a possible misunderstanding of the actual entry criteria, which relate solely to subject matter and content and not to the author's nationality or residence. In support of this argument I present English Passengers by Matthew Kneale which was shortlisted for the award in 2001; Kneale is described in Wikipedia as "British".
But the original sentence is somewhat confusing and may give some readers (like me for instance) the wrong impression about the award's entry criteria. Maybe a mild rewording was in order.
An announcement I missed a week or so back concerns the 2007 National Biography Award Shortlist. The award is administered and presented by the State Library of New South Wales. The shortlisted works are:
Mr Stuart's Track by John Bailey
No Time for Dances by Gillian Bouras
The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize: A Life in Science by Paul Doherty
Arthur Tange by Peter Edwards
East of Time by Jacob B Rosenberg
Margaret Olley: Far from a Still Life by Meg Stewart
In addition the judges highly commended the following works:
Bernard Shaw: A Life by A.M. Gibbs
Will Dyson, Australia's Radical Genius by Ross McMullin
Hoi Polloi by Craig Sherborne
The winner of the $20,000 award will be announced on Tuesday 27th March.
"Articulate", the ABC arts weblog, has announced that Will Elliott has been named the winner of the 2007 Australian Shadows Award, for his novel The Pilo Family Circus.
The longlist for the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (as it is now known) has been announced. As far as I can see there are two Australian books on the list:
Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland
Careless by Deborah Robertson
The shortlist will be announced on April 17th, and the winners on June 6th.
The regional winners for the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize have now been announced.
In the South East Asia and South Pacific region, the winners were:
Best Book: Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones (New Zealand),
Penguin Best First Book: Tuvalu by Andrew O'Connor (Australia), Allen and Unwin
The longlist for the 2007 Miles Franklin Award has been announced (pdf file). Only eight books on the list this year, after 12 last year. It might point to something.
The list consists of:
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
Silent Parts by John Charalambous
The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
Beyond The Break by Sandra Hall
Dreams Of Speaking by Gail Jones
The Unexpected Elements Of Love by Kate Legge
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
The shortlist of 5 novels will be announced on April 19, and the winner on June 21.
Pavolv's Cat has alerted us, on her weblog, to the upcoming announcement of a
major new Australian literary prize. No details at present but it is rumoured to be big, really big. James Bradley seems to know all about it, but isn't telling. Further information to follow by the end of this month.
First novel prize for authors over 50, perhaps. Nah, not a hope.
As mentioned a couple of days back, the longlist for the 2007 Miles Franklin Award will be released on March 15th, and, as is my annual practice, I've put together a list of novels that might appear. Remember that 54 novels were submitted for the 2006 Award, with 12 making the longlist and five the shortlist.
Longlist possibilities:
Shadowboxing by Tony Birch
The Resurrectionist by James Bradley
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
Silent Parts by John Charalambous
Safety by Tegan Bennett Daylight
The Pilo Family Circus by William Elliott
The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
Diamond Dove by Adrian Hyland
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
The Memory of Tides by Angelo Loukakis
Underground by Andrew McGahan
Cricket Kings by William McInnes
Tuvalu by Andrew O'Connor
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
There must be more than that?
Sydney-based writer Damian McDonald has been announced as the winner of the 2007 ABC Fiction Award.
McDonald's novel, Luck in the Greater West, was chosen from over 400 entrants. The prize is worth $10,000, and the book will be published by ABC Books as part of the award.
Last year's award was won by Will Elliott for his novel The Pilo Family Circus, which has done pretty well for itself in the past 12 months.
Australia's most prestigious literary award will be appearing on our cultural radars before too long: the longlist will be released on March 15th, the shortlist on April 19, and the winner on June 21.
The "Australian Book Review", honoring the award's 50th anniversary, has instituted the Miles Franklin Beat-up Award. "This will be awarded to the first reader who alerts us to a grumpy news story about the perfidy of Miles." In other words, they want someone to grumble about the fact that the award is only presented to books (or plays) which reflect Australian characters, settings or references. Well, I had my say about this last year so I won't be caught out again. I may be grumpy but even I can see a set-up when it stares me in the face.
The Australian Shadow Awards are presented by the Australian Horror Writers' Association to honor dark fiction, and the 2006 shortlists have now been released. Well, actually, they have been re-released. In their first incarnation, the awards listed Terry Dowling's story "The Bullet that Grows in the Gun". Unfortunately, this story was originally published in 1985 and hence should not have been eligible. This is only the second year of these awards so it is hoped that this is just a minor glitch, and that procedures will be put in place to ensure it doesn't happen again. The discrepancy has now been rectified and the shortlisted works are:
"Father Renoir's Hands" by Lee Battersby
"The Blow-Off" by Stephen Dedman
"The Dying Light" by Deborah Biancotti
The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott
"The Bridal Bier" by Carol Ryles
The winner of the award will be announced on March 25th.
From the "Horrorscope" weblog we have the news that the shortlisted titles for the 2006 Bram Stoker Awards have been released. Terry Dowling is nominated in the "Superior Achievement in a Collection" category for his book Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear . And Rocky Wood is listed under "Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction" for Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished.
The Regional Shortlists for the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize have been announced. In the South East Asia and South Pacific region the nominated works are:
Best Book
Ocean Roads by James George (New Zealand), Huia
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey (Australia), Knopf/Random House
Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones (New Zealand), Penguin
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright (Australia), Giramondo
The Fainter by Damien Wilkins (New Zealand), Victoria University Press
Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan (Australia), Allen and Unwin
Careless by Deborah Robertson (Australia), Picador
Best First Book
Tuvalu by Andrew O'Connor (Australia), Allen and Unwin
Davey Darling by Paul Shannon (New Zealand), Penguin
The Fish & Chip Song by Carl Nixon (New Zealand), Vintage
The Long Road of the Junkmailer by Patrick Holland (Australia), UQP
Poinciana by Jane Turner Goldsmith (Australia), Wakefield
In addition, M.J. Hyland's novel, Carry Me Down, is shortlisted under the Best Novel category in the Europe and South Asia region.
Jason Nahrung, of Brisbane's "Courier-Mail" newspaper, went along to the 2007 Aurealis Awards ceremony and reports on what he found there.
Chris Lawson, over on the "Talking Squid" weblog, lists the 2006 Aurealis Award winners:
Golden Aurealis
Novel: The Pilo Family Circus, Will Elliott (ABC Books)
Short Story: The Arrival, Shaun Tan (Lothian)
Science Fiction
Novel: K-Machines, Damien Broderick (Avalon)
Short Story: "The Seventh Letter", Sean Williams (Bulletin Summer Reading Edition)
Horror
Novel (split): The Pilo Family Circus, Will Elliott (ABC Books) / Prismatic, Edwina Grey (Lothian)
Short Story: "Dead of Winter", Stephen Dedman (Weird Tales #339)
Fantasy
Novel: Wildwood Dancing, Juliet Marillier (Pan MacMillan)
Short Story: "A Fine Magic", Margo Lanagan (Eidolon I)
Young Adult
Novel: Monster Blood Tattoo: Book One. Foundling, D.M. Cornish (Omnibus)
Short Story: The Arrival, Shaun Tan (Lothian)
Children's
Novel: Melissa Queen of Evil, Mardi McConnochie (Pan Macmillan)
Short Fiction (split): "The True Story of Mary Who Wanted to Stand on Her Head", Jane Godwin (Allen & Unwin) / "Woolvs in the Sitee", Margaret Wild, Anne Spudvilas (Penguin)
Peter McNamara Convenor's Award
Bill Congreve
It has been announced that Sonya Hartnett's novel, Surrender, and Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, have both been named as Honor Books in the 2007 American Library Association's Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. This is the second year in a row that Zusak has been shortlisted for the main award.
The full list of nominations for the 2006 Aurealis Awards have now been released. The Awards are given for best sf and fantasy works published by Australian writers during 2006. The winners will be announced in Brisbane on January 27th.
Science Fiction novels
K. A. Bedford, Hydrogen Steel
Damien Broderick, K-Machines
Andrew McGahan, Underground
Sean Williams & Shane Dix, Geodesica Ascent
Science Fiction short stories
Lee Battersby, "Dark Ages"
David Conyers, "Aftermath"
Stephen Dedman, "Down to the Tethys Sea"
Sean Williams, "The Seventh Letter"
Horror novels
Will Elliott, The Pilo Family Circus
Edwina Grey, Prismatic
Martin Livings, Carnies
Brett McBean, The Mother
Horror short stories
Stephen Dedman, "Dead of Winter"
Margo Lanagan, "Winkie"
Chris Lawson, "Hieronymus Boche"
Kaaron Warren, "Dead Sea Fruit"
Kaaron Warren, "Woman Train"
Fantasy novels
Grace Dugan, The Silver Road
Glenda Larke, Heart of the Mirage
Juliet Marillier, Wildwood Dancing
Sean McMullen, Voidfarer
Michael Pryor, Blaze of Glory
Fantasy short stories
Lee Battersby, "Dark Ages"
Stephanie Campisi, "Why the Balloon Man Floats Away"
Margo Lanagan, "A Fine Magic"
Lucy Sussex, "The Revenant"
Anna Tambour, "See Here, See There"
Young Adult novels
D.M. Cornish, Monster Blood Tattoo Book One: Foundling
Amanda Holohan, The King's Fool
Justine Larbalestier, Magic Lessons
Juliet Marillier, Wildwood Dancing
Scott Westerfeld, The Last Days
Young Adult short stories
Deborah Biancotti, "They Dying Light"
Simon Brown, "Leviathan"
Margo Lanagan, "A Feather in the Breast of God"
Margo Lanagan, "Baby Jane"
Margo Lanagan, "Forever Upward"
Shaun Tan, The Arrival
Children's novels
Isobelle Carmody, A Fox Called Sorrow
John Flanagan, Oakleaf Bearers
Mardie McConnochie, Melissa, Queen of Evil
Nury Vittachi, Twilight in the Land of Nowhen
Kim Wilkins, Fantastica: The Sunken Kingdom Series
Children's short stories
Jane Godwin, "The True Story of Mary Who Wanted to Stand on Her Head"
Margaret Wild & Anne Spudvilas, "Woolvs in the Sittee"
Victor Kelleher & Stephen Michael King, "The Magic Violin"
The winners of the 2006 Melbourne Prize for Literature were announced last night.
Helen Garner won the major award for a body of work that "has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life", and Christos Tsiolkas won the best writing prize for a writer under 40, for his novel Dead Europe.
Morris Lurie has been announced as the winner of the 2006 Patrick White Award. The award is presented annually to an Australian writer of longstanding who has failed to receive their due recognition. It was established by Patrick White using the monies he received along with his Novel Prize for Literature in 1973. Wikipedia has a full list of the past recipients.
The shortlist for the 2007 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has now been released - seems a touch early but there we are.
There appear to be 11 Australian novels on the list (out of 138):
March by Geraldine Brooks
The Garden Book by Brian Castro
Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee
White Thorn by Bryce Courtenay
The Secret River by Kate Grenville
Surrender by Sonya Hartnett
The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald
The Butterfly Man by Heather Rose
The Marsh Birds by Eva Sallis
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
Affection by Ian Townsend
The short list will be announced on April 4th 2007 and the winner on June 14th 2007.
[Update: I've added Heather Rose's novel.]
Carrie Tiffany's novel, Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, has been shortlisted for the 2006 Guardian First Book Award.
The other shortlisted titles are:
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
Harbor by Lorraine Adams
Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan.
"The award, for first-time authors, aims to recognise and reward new writing across fiction and non-fiction. This year's judges include Jude Kelly, artistic director of the South Bank Centre, the authors Pankaj Mishra, Rose Tremain and Joseph O'Connor, broadcaster Greg Dyke and Katharine Viner, features editor of the Guardian."
The winner will be announced in early December.
The Turkish novellist Orhan Pamuk has been announced as the winner of the 2006 Nobel prize for Literature. Some bookmakers had him as an early favourite but the feeling from some litbloggers was that he would be passed over due to this age - he was born in 1952. I doubt anyone will complain about this choice, especially given the problems Pamuk has had with the authorities in his own country.
Ah, yet another Nobel laureate I've never read. If that to-be-read pile falls over in the middle of the night I'm a dead man.
Kiran Desai's novel, The Inheritance of Loss, has been announced as the winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Her mother, Anita Desai, was shortlisted for the award 3 times (1980, href="http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/prizes/booker/booker1984.html">1984 and href="http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/prizes/booker/booker1999.html">1999) but never won.
Kiran Desai is the first woman to win the award since Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin in 2000.
As noted yesterday, bookmakers had Desai ranked 5th favourite out of the six shortlisted novels.
With the winner of the 2006 Man Booker prize due to be announced Wednesday morning, Melbourne time, "The Age" catches up with Kate Grenville and M.J. Hyland. Neither thinks they are going to win it. The bookmaker Betfair has Waters at $1.84, Grenville at $4.50, Hyland $4.50, St Aubyn $5.70, Desai $7.40, and Matar at $10.00. (Each payout for a $1 bet presumably.) Which makes Waters at better than even money. Nah, too short.
Belinda Castles has been announced as the winner of the 2006 "The Australian"/Vogel Literary Award for her novel The River Baptists.
The printed version of "The Australian" carries an extract from the novel but this doesn't appear to be on the paper's website.
The Foundation for Australian Literary Studies has announced the 2005 winner of the Colin Roderick Award.
The winner was The Broken Shore by Peter Temple.
Temple's novel was chosen from a shortlist which also included:
Not Wrong - Just Different, Katharine Brisbane (Currency press)
The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery (Text Publishing)
The Secret River, Kate Grenville (Text Publishing)
The Marsh Birds, Eva Sallis (Allen & Unwin)
1932, Gerald Stone (Pan Macmillan Australia)
Affection, Ian Townsend (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
Dirt Cheap, Elizabeth Wynhausen (Pan Macmillan Australia)
The award of $10,000 and the H.T Priestly Medal will be presented In Townsville on October 17th this year.
My thanks to Josie Macgregor for bringing this award to my attention. As she puts it: "The Colin Roderick Award is always interesting because it takes a look at ALL Australian books -- fiction, non-fiction, short stories, poetry -- and chooses the best from the previous year, so it's unique and has a slightly different perspective."
Details of the nominees for this year's "The Australian"/Vogel Literary Award have been announced.
One of the judges, John Dale, comments that he and his fellow judges (Murray Waldren and Marele Day) "were unanimous in agreeing that the level of accomplishment and confidence in the 2006 entries was higher than in any year during which we have been associated with the award." Given that the award has been won in the past by such Australian literary stalwarts as Kate Grenville and Tim Winton, this is saying something.
The shortlisted authors are:
Jeremy Aitken for The Bike
Belinda Castles for The River Baptists
Jarad Henry for Spider Web
Matthew Schreuder for Muscle
Anna Westbrook for Hey Sugar
You can find details of the award, along with a list of past winners at my Australian/Vogel Award website. Must get to fixing this sometime soon.
It's definitely awards season in Australia, and one that I always seem to miss is the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. This is probably because the shortlists were announced this year on August 25 and the winners released on September 12, neatly falling within my latest holiday period.
Anyway, the shortlisted works, and winners, were:
Emerging Queensland Author - Manuscript Award
Michele Di Bartolo for The Sicilian Kitchen
Karen Foxlee for The Anatomy of Wings [WINNER]
Simon Groth for Here Today
Hamish Sewell for A Quota of Heartbeats
Unpublished Indigenous Writer - The David Unaipon Award
Gayle Kennedy for Me, Antman and Fleabag [WINNER]
Jeanine Anne Leane for Dark Secrets: After Dreaming AD 1887 -1961
Lorraine McGee-Sippel for Hey Mum, What's a Half Caste?
Barrina South and Aunty June Barker for Life on the Brewarrina Mission
Non-Fiction - Dymocks Literacy Foundation Award
Neil Chenoweth for Packers Lunch (Allen & Unwin) [WINNER]
Dr Brenda Niall for Judy Cassab: a portrait (Allen & Unwin)
Jacob Rosenberg for East of Time (Brandl & Schlesinger)
Craig Sherborne for Hoi Polloi (Black Inc)
History Book Award
Richard Bosworth for Mussolini's Italy (Allen Lane /Penguin Press)
Dr Peter Edwards for Arthur Tange: The Last of the Mandarins (Allen & Unwin) [WINNER]
Dr Regina Ganter for Mixed Relations: Asian/Aboriginal Contact in North Australia (UWA Press)
Prof Patricia Jalland for Changing Ways of Death in Twentieth Century Australia (UNSW Press)
Children's Book Award
Chardi Christian for Selkie and the Fisherman (Hachette Livre Australia)
Martine Murray for The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley (who can't help flying high and falling in deep) (Allen & Unwin) [WINNER]
Narelle Oliver for Home (Omnibus Books)
Tohby Riddle for Irving the Magician (Penguin Group)
Carole Wilkinson for Garden of the Purple Dragon (Black Dog Books)
Young Adult Book Award
Catherine Bateson for His Name in Fire (University of Queensland Press)
Ursula Dubosarsky for The Red Shoe (Allen & Unwin) [WINNER]
Julie Lawrinson for Bye, Beautiful (Penguin Group)
Kierin Meehan for In the Monkey Forest (Penguin Group)
Scott Westerfeld for Peeps (Penguin Group)
Science Writer - Department of State Development, Trade and Innovation Award
Brad Collis for Food Crops (Various print media)
Dr Carole Hungerford for Good Health in the 21st Century (Scribe) [WINNER]
Murray Sayle for Overloading Emoh Ruo: The Rise and Rise of Hydrocarbon Civilisation (Griffith University & ABC Books)
Poetry Collection - Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award
John Kinsella for The New Arcadia (Fremantle Arts Centre Press) [WINNER]
Jennifer Maiden for Friendly Fire (Giramondo)
Les Murray for The Biplane Houses (Black Inc)
Jaya Savige for Latecomers (University of Queensland Press)
Australian Short Story Collection - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award
Tony Birch for Shadow Boxing (Scribe)
Craig Cormick for A Funny thing Happened at 27 000 Feet . . . (Ginninderra Press) [WINNER]
Michael De Valle for Take a Breath & Hold It (Ginninderra Press)
Tara June Winch for Swallow the Air (University of Queensland Press)
Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate - The Harry Williams Award
Matthew Carney for The Ice Age (Four Corners ABC TV)
David Corlett for Following them Home: The Fate of the Returned Asylum Seekers (Black Inc)
Graeme Crowley and Paul Wilson for Who Killed Leanne? (Zeus Publications)
Gideon Haigh for Asbestos House (Scribe) [WINNER]
Murray Sayle for Overloading Emoh Ruo: The Rise and Rise of Hydrocarbon Civilisation (Griffith University & ABC Books)
Film Script - Pacific Film and Television Commission Award
Tony Ayres for The Home Song Stories (Big and Little Films Pty Ltd)
Reg Cribb for Last Train to Freo (Taylor Media Pty Ltd)
Rolf de Heer for Ten Canoes (Vertigo Productions) [WINNER]
Ana Kokkinos and Andrew Bovell for Book of Revelation (Wildheart Films)
Keith Thompson for Clubland (RB Films)
Ann Turner for Irresistible (Cascade Films Pty Ltd)
Drama Script (Stage) Award
Van Badham for The Gabriels (Floodtide Theatre Company)
Patrick Carr for Batavia (Map Theatre Co.)
Patricia Cornelius for Boy Overboard (Australian Theatre for Young People)
Noelle Janaczewska for Mrs Petrov's Shoe (Theatre @ Risk) [WINNER]
Stephen Sewell for The 3 Furies: Scenes from the Life of Frances Bacon (Performing Lines)
Television Script - QUT Creative Industries Award
Richard Dennison for Pioneers of Love (Orana Films)
Sarah Lambert for The Alice - Episode 14 (Southern Star)
Sean Nash for All Saints - Episode 358 "Drawing the Line" (Network 7)
Fiona Seres for Love My Way - Episode 15 (Southern Star)
Katherine Thomson for Unfolding Florence (Becker Entertainment) [WINNER]
Fiction Book Award
Brian Castro for The Garden Book (Giramondo) [WINNER]
Robert Drewe for Grace (Penguin Group)
Kate Grenville for The Secret River (The Text Publishing Company)
Roger McDonald for The Ballad of Desmond Kale (Random House)
Gail Jones for Dreams of Speaking (Random House)
The shortlisted novels for the 2006 Man Booker Prize has been announced and, I think for the first time, two Australian novels have made the final list.
The novels are:
The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
The Secret River, Kate Grenville
Carry Me Down, M.J. Hyland
In the Country of Men, Hisham Matar
Mother's Milk, Edward St Aubyn
The Night Watch, Sarah Waters
No Carey, no Mitchell and no previous winner on the list. Four women shortlisted is probably also a record.
The winner will be announced on Tuesday 10th October. I have read a grand total of one of these titles - which says far more about me than the novels chosen.
As mentioned here in late May, the Melbourne Prize is to be Australia's richest literary prize, valued at $60,000. The short listed authors for the main prize are: Helen Garner, John Marsden, Alex Miller, Dorothy Porter and Hannie Rayson. Best writing award finalists are: Azhar Abidi, Ben Chessell, Neil Grant, Sonya Hartnett, Mary Ellen Jordan, David McCooey, Ross Mueller, Carrie Tiffany, Christos Tsiolkas and Henry von Doussa. The winners wil be anounced on November 15th.
I'd like to be able to explain the difference between the two awards, and even why there are two awards after the initial reports only mentioned one, but the only listed website for the prize is STILL not functioning.
The winners of the 2006 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were announced a week or so back - I missed the announcement as I was travelling. You can get full details of the winners, along with the judges' reports, at the State Library of Victoria's website.
The shortlisted works are:
The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
Theft: A Love Story, Peter Carey [Knopf/Random House]
The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction
Margaret Michaelis: Love, Loss and Photography, Helen Ennis [National Gallery of Australia]
The C J Dennis Prize for Poetry
Urban Myths: 210 Poems, John Tranter [University of Queensland Press]
The Louis Esson Prize for Drama
Three Furies: Scenes from the Life of Francis Bacon, Stephen Sewell [Adelaide Festival]
The Prize for Young Adult Fiction
Theodora's Gift, Ursula Dubosarsky [Penguin]
The Prize for a First Book of History
Human Remains, Helen MacDonald [Melbourne University Press]
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
Is the Media Asleep?, David Marr from "Do Not Disturb: Is the Media Failing Australia?" [Black Inc]
The Village Roadshow Prize for Screen Writing
Noise, Matthew Saville [Retroactive Films]
The Prize for Indigenous Writing
Swallow the Air, Tara June Winch [University of Queensland Press]
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
Rohypnol, Andrew Hutchinson
The Grollo Ruzzene Foundation Prize for Writing about Italians in Australia
When in Rome: Chasing La Dolce Vita, Penelope Green [Hachette Livre Australia]
The John Curtin Prize for Journalism
Information idol - How Google is Making Us Stupid, Gideon Haigh [The Monthly]
The Tall Man, Chloe Hooper [The Monthly]
The Crime Writers' Association of Australia have announced the winners of the 2006 Ned Kelly Awards.
Novel
Crook as Rookwood by Chris Nyst (tied with) The Broken Shore by
Peter Temple
First Novel
Out of the Silence by Wendy James
Non-Fiction
Packing Death by Lachlan McCullough
The winners of the 2006 Age Book of the Year awards were announced at the Melbourne Writers' Festival. (Details of this are coming a little late - blame it on lack of internet access while travelling.)
Non-Fiction
Velocity by Mandy Sayer
Poetry
Friendly Fire by Jennifer Maiden
Fiction
Dead Europe by Christos Tsialkos
Maiden's collection of poetry was also announced as the Age Book of the Year.
The shortlisted works for the 2006 Ned Kelly Awards (Australia's premier crime writing awards) have been announced. The nominees are:
Best Novel
Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn, Marshall Browne (Random House)
Saving Billy, Peter Corris (Allen & Unwin)
Crook as Rookwood, Chris Nyst (HarperColins)
Rubdown, Leigh Redhead (Allen & Unwin)
Five Oranges, Graham Reilly (Hachette Livre)
The Broken Shore, Peter Temple (Text Publishing)
First Novel
Head Shot, Jarad Henry (Thompson Walker)
Out of the Silence: A Story of Love , Betrayal, Politics and Murder, Wendy James (Random House)
Dead Set, Kel Robertson (Text Publishing)
True Crime
You'll Never Take Me Alive, Nick Bleszynski (Random House)
In Your Face, Rochelle Jackson (ABC Books)
Norfolk Island of Secrets, Tim Latham (Allen & Unwin)
Packing Death, Lachlan McCulloch (Sly Ink)
And Then the Darkness, Sue Williams (ABC Books)
The winners will be announced on August 30 during the Melbourne Writers' Festival.
The shortlisted works for the 2006 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were announced last Friday (11 August) and somehow I contrived to miss seeing the list before today. You can get full details of the award at the State Library of Victoria's website.
The shortlisted works are:
The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
Theft: A Love Story, Peter Carey [Knopf/Random House]
Slow Man, J. M. Coetzee [Knopf/Random House]
The Secret River, Kate Grenville [Text Publishing]
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, Carrie Tiffany [Picador/Pan Macmillan]
The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction
Aboriginal Australians: A History Since 1800, Richard Broome [Allen & Unwin]
Margaret Michaelis: Love, Loss and Photography, Helen Ennis [National Gallery of Australia]
Bernard Shaw: A Life, Anthony M. Gibbs [UNSW Press]
East of Time, Jacob G. Rosenberg [Brandl and Schlesinger}
Hoi Polloi, Craig Sherborne [Black Inc]
The C J Dennis Prize for Poetry
Universal Andalusia, Brett Dionysius [Soi 3/Papertiger Media]
The Kindly Ones, Susan Hampton [Five Islands Press]
Urban Myths: 210 Poems, John Tranter [University of Queensland Press]
The Louis Esson Prize for Drama
Checklist for an Armed Robber, Vanessa Bates [Vitalstatistix National Women's Theatre]
Ruby's Last Dollar, Reg Cribb [Pork Chop Productions]
Three Furies: Scenes from the Life of Francis Bacon, Stephen Sewell [Adelaide Festival]
The Prize for Young Adult Fiction
Theodora's Gift, Ursula Dubosarsky [Penguin]
The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley, Martine Murray [Allen & Unwin]
Losing It, Lizzie Wilcock [Scholastic Press]
The Prize for a First Book of History
Human Remains, Helen MacDonald [Melbourne University Press]
Botany Bay: Where Histories Meet, Maria Nugent [Allen & Unwin]
Traumascapes, Maria Tumarkin [Melbourne University Press]
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
The Tortures of Heritage, Waleed Aly [The Age]
Relaxed and Comfortable: The Liberal Party's Australia, Judith Brett, 'Quarterly Essay', [Black Inc]
Is the Media Asleep?, David Marr from "Do Not Disturb: Is the Media Failing Australia?" [Black Inc]
The Village Roadshow Prize for Screen Writing
Suburban Mayhem, Alice Bell [Suburban Mayhem Pty Ltd]
Last Train to Freo, Reg Cribb [Taylor Media]
Noise, Matthew Saville [Retroactive Films]
The Prize for Indigenous Writing
Watershed, Fabienne Bayet-Charlton [IAD Press]
Sweet Guy, Jared Thomas [IAD Press]
Little Black Bastard, Noel Tovey [Hachette Livre Australia]
Swallow the Air, Tara June Winch [University of Queensland Press]
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
Aether, Kate Cole-Adams
Rohypnol, Andrew Hutchinson
Among the Dead, Chris Womersley
The Grollo Ruzzene Foundation Prize for Writing about Italians in Australia
When in Rome: Chasing La Dolce Vita, Penelope Green [Hachette Livre Australia]
The Olive Sisters, Amanda Hampson [Penguin]
From Tuscany to Victoria: The Life and Work of Pietro Baracchi, Carlo Catani, Ettore Checchi, Daniela Volpe [Italian Australia Institute]
The John Curtin Prize for Journalism
Information idol - How Google is Making Us Stupid, Gideon Haigh [The Monthly]
The Tall Man, Chloe Hooper [The Monthly]
Generation Lost in the Desert, Frontier Too Far and Scams in the Desert, Nicholas Rothwell [The Australian]
Ties That Bind, Margaret Simons [Griffith Review]
In 2006 the following awards will NOT be offered: The Prize for Science Writing and The Dinny O'Hearn Prize for Literary Translation.
The winners will be announced by the Victorian Premier on Monday 4 September.
Commentary on the 2006 longlist for the 2006 Man Booker Prize is starting to flow out now that people have had a day to digest it.
"The Age" leads, naturally enough, with the Australian angle, obtaining comments from both Carey and Grenville -- both voicing surprise that they actually made the list. To use a sporting analogy, they're "taking it one prize at a time".
"The Australian" also elicits a comment from Grenville, but uses that dreaded American term "threepeat" to indicate that Carey is up for his third prize.
In "The Sydney Morning Herald", Susan Wyndham covers the main Australian points but shifts focus by quoting Graham Sharpe of the William Hill bookmakers who says Mitchell "thoroughly deserves to win after being robbed with Cloud Atlas two years ago by Alan Hollinghurst's Line of Beauty". Which is more like it. He wuz robbed I tell ya, robbed.
Claire Armistead, in "The Guardian", leaves sport behind for a more alcoholic approach: "Like any good wine producer, the Booker has its vintage and non-vintage years. If last year's shortlist was premier cru, the previous two were best drunk young. On the strength of the 19 books on the latest longlist we are looking at a year that is respectable but not startling, which can expect to be served up at dinner parties across the literary world."
It's David vs Goliath in "The Daily Telegraph" as Nigel Reynolds seems delighted that Nadine Gordimer, at 82, is on the list. He also notes that Kiran Desai is the daughter of Anita Desai, a great writer, who was shortlisted for the prize three times in the 1980s and 1990s.
On the weblog front, the Literary Saloon isn't that impressed by the list: "None really seem prize-worthy to us, but the Carey and Mitchell are better than some of the titles that have taken this prize recently (including Carey's own True History of the Kelly Gang) -- though we also think Mitchell's three previous novels are better than this one is."
On the betting front, William Hill Bookmakers has Mitchell at 5/1, Carey and Waters at 7/1, Unsworth at 8/1 and Jacobson at 10/1.
Expect a lot more on this over the coming days/weeks.
The longlist for the 2006 Man booker prize has been announced. The list is:
Theft: A Love Story, Peter Carey
The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
Gathering the Water, Robert Edric
Get a Life, Nadine Gordimer
The Secret River, Kate Grenville
Carry Me Down, M.J. Hyland
Kalooki Nights, Howard Jacobson
Seven Lies, James Lasdun
The Other Side of the Bridge, Mary Lawson
So Many Ways to Begin, Jon McGregor
In the Country of Men, Hisham Matar
The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
Black Swan Green, David Mitchell
The Perfect Man, Naeem Murr
Be Near Me, Andrew O'Hagan
The Testament of Gideon Mack, James Robertson
Mother's Milk, Edward St Aubyn
The Ruby in Her Navel, Barry Unsworth
The Night Watch, Sarah Waters
As usual there are a number of books that might have been expected to make the list but didn't. There are three past winners of the prize on the list in Carey, Gordimer and Unsworth, but there are also a lot of new names.
Three Australian authors have made this year's list: Carey, Grenville and Hyland. The last two of these are both published by Canongate in the UK - continuing that publisher's recent run of success with this award.
My guess is that it will be out of Carey, Mitchell and Waters, with Mitchell the favourite.
The shortlist will be announced on Thursday 14th September, and the winner on Tuesday 10th October.
The shortlists for the 2006 Age Book of the Year Awards have been released.
Non-Fiction
A Trial Separation: Australia and the Decolonisation of Papua New Guinea by Donald Denoon
The Weather Makers: The History and Future of Climate Change by Tim Flannery
Thunder from the Silent Zone: Rethinking China by Paul Monk
Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret and Extraordinary Lives by Helen O'Neill
Velocity: A Memoir by Mandy Sayer
Poetry
The Kindly Ones by Susan Hampton
Friendly Fire by Jennifer Maiden
Biplane Houses by Les Murray
Urban Myths by John Tranter
The Universe Looks Down by Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Fiction
The Resurrectionist by James Bradley
Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee
The Secret River by Kate Grenville
Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas
Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch
The prize for each category is $10,000, with a further $10,000 for the Age Book of the Year.
The awards will be announced at the Melbourne Town Hall on Friday August 25th, during the Melbourne Writers' Festival.
The winners of 2006 Romance Writers of America Rita awards had been announced, and Marion Lennox, from Ballarat in Victoria, was adjudged the winner in the category of Best Traditional Romance, for her novel Princess of Convenience. This is a major award in the field ranking with Nebula Award, presented by the Science Fiction Writers of America,
and the Edgars, presented by the Mystery Writers of America.
The longlist for the inaugral Dylan Thomas prize has been announced and we find that Emily Maguire's first novel, Taming the Beast, has been selected. The prize is for writers under the age of 30 who write in English. The prize will be awarded biennially. The winner will be announced at the Brangwyn Hall in Swansea on 27th October 2006. With a first prize of £60,000 it's not to be sneezed at.
Jason Steger in "The Age" sums up the response right up front: "Most pundits fancied the novel about the early days of white settlement for this year's Miles Franklin. After all, it had already won both the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the NSW Premier's Prize...Last night, the novel set in early 19th-century NSW duly won Australia's most significant literary prize. But it wasn't The Secret River, Kate Grenville's much-acclaimed novel and the hot favourite; it was Roger McDonald's The Ballad of Desmond Kale...It was the fifth time one of his novels had been shortlisted for the award, and McDonald admitted he was 'gobsmacked' when told of his success."
In "The Australian", Murray Waldren reports that award judge Morag Fraser said the decision was unanimous. He also concentrates on the fact that McDonald won, rather than that Grenville lost, though he does acknowledge McDonald's history with the award: "Four times before, the writer, based in Braidwood, NSW, had been shortlisted for this most prestigious and richest award on the Australian literary calendar, and he feared he was fated to remain a perennial bridesmaid."
Catherine Keenan gives a nod to Grenville along the way to congratulating McDonald, in "The Sydney Morning Herald", and notes: "It was a particularly distinguished win given the strength of this year's shortlist".
In Brisbane's "Courier-Mail", Jonathon Moran produces the shortest report of the four but does give probably the best quote from the winner: "It is something that you hope for but you can never guarantee it will become a reality. It is a terrific prize to win, and it gets the recognition and the readership that every author craves."
In news just to hand, it has been announced that Roger McDonald is the winner of the 2006 Miles Franklin Award for his novel The Ballad of Desmond Kale. This might come as a bit of a surprise to some people as it wasn't widely reviewed and as Kate Grenville was generally considered the front runner. It certainly comes as a surprise to me as it's the only one of the five I have yet to read. Bugger.
As this is the day that the winner of the 2006 Miles Franklin Award is announced, "The Age" features two articles about the award. Jason Steger, literary editor of the paper, asks "Is it Time for a New Chapter?" and Jane Sullivan, reporter on matters literary, discusses "The Power of the Prize". My choice of winner this year: Kate Grenville for The Secret River, though I wouldn't be at all surprised if Brenda Walker's The Wing of Night runs a close second. Don't worry, after tomorrow this will all go away and we can forget about it for another year.
Zadie Smith has been announced as the winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel On Beauty. (The picture on the BBC website doesn't have her looking terribly elated at the news, though she does seem to have quite a grip on the statuette). Smith beat out Australian Carrie Tiffany for the award, who was shortlisted for her novel Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living.
Nominations for the Melbourne Prize for Literature 2006 are now open. We reported in March that this prize, which is to be awarded for a body of work rather than just an individual work, is to be the richest literary prize in Australia, worth $60,000. Which we think is a good thing.
The current issue of "Australian Book Review" arrived with a insert advertising the prize. It gives details of the award, lists of sponsors and patrons, and a detachable nomination form. It also list two websites which readers can visit for more information. Trouble is, at this date, neither of them lead anywhere. This is a bit poor. A lot of money and time has been spent getting the prize up and running, and in getting the organisation in place. And yet no one carried out a system check to see if the websites worked or not. It's called project development and it's the last box on the checklist. Hopefully the sites will be accessible soon. The two sites in question are: http://www.melbourneprize.org/ and http://www.melbourneprizetrust.org/.
Australians have been nominated for the 2006 Barry Awards. The shortlisted works are: Lost by Michael Robotham, in the Best British Novel Published in the UK in 2005 category; and Seven Deadly Wonders by Matthew Reilly, in the Best Thriller category. The Barry Awards (named for the late Barry Gardner, fan and critic) are nominated by the staff of "Deadly Pleasures", a quarterly mystery magazine, and voted on by its subscribers and readers. The winners will be announced at Boucheron in Madison, over the period September 28th to October 1st.
The winners of the 2006 NSW Premier's Literary Awards were announced last night. The winners were:
Christina Stead Prize for fiction ($20,000)
Kate Grenville, The Secret River (Text Publishing)
Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction ($20,000)
Jacob G. Rosenberg, East of Time (Brandl & Schlesinger)
Kenneth Slessor Prize for poetry ($15,000)
Jaya Savige, Latecomers (Uni Qld Press)
NSW Premier's Prize for literary scholarship ($15,000)
Terry Collits, Postcolonial Conrad: Paradoxes of Empire (Routledge)
Ethel Turner Prize for young people's literature ($15,000)
Ursula Dubosarsky, Theodora's Gift (Penguin)
Patricia Wrightson Prize ($15,000)
Kierin Meehan, In the Monkey Forest (Penguin)
Community Relations Commission Award ($15,000)
Kate Grenville, The Secret River (Text Publishing)
Gleebooks Prize ($10,000) & Book of the Year ($2,000)
Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers: the History and Future Impact of Climate Change (Text Publishing)
UTS Award for New Writing ($5,000)
Steven Lang, An Accidental Terrorist (Uni Qld Press)
Play Award ($15,000)
Thomas Murphy, Strangers in Between (Griffin Theatre Co)
Script Writing Award ($15,000)
Chris Lilley, We Can Be Heroes (Princess Pictures)
Special Award ($5,000)
Rosemary Dobson AO
Brenda Walker has been announced as the winner of the 2006 Nita B. Kibble Award for Women's Life Writing, for her novel The Wing of Night, which I currently have under review. Shortlisted for the prize were The Secret River by Kate Grenville and The Butterfly Man by Heather Rose.
The shortlist for Australia's oldest literary award has been announced.
"The ALS Gold Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year. The Medal was inaugurated by the Australian Literature Society, which was founded in Melbourne in 1899 and incorporated into the Association for the Study of Australian Literature in 1982."
The shortlisted novels:
Banana Heart Summer, Merlinda Bobis
Dead Europe, Christos Tsiolkas
East of Time, Jacob G. Rosenberg
March, Geraldine Brooks
The Patron Saint of Eels, Gregory Day
The following novels were highly commended by the judging panel:
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, Carrie Tiffany
Marsh Birds, Eva Sallis
The Gold Medal winner will be announced on 2nd July, 2006.
Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief, which featured here recently, has been awarded the 2006 Kathleen Mitchell Award, a $7500 prize given biennially to encourage Australian authors under 30. Susan Wyndham catches up with Zusack in "The Sydney Morning Herald". The previous winners of the award are Sonya Hartnett, James Bradley, Julia Leigh and Lucy Lehmann. Some good company there.
A couple of weeks back I linked to an article in "The Age" written by Jane Sullivan in which she discussed the Miles Franklin Award, in particular the entry conditions. Basically she didn't like the current requirement that the works entered had to present Australian life "in any of its phases". These conditions were written into the will of Miles Franklin, the legacy of which was used to set up the award in the first place, and hence into the rules governing the award.
Sullivan used two recent novels by Australians - March by Geraldine Brooks and The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers by Delia Falconer - as examples of critically acclaimed novels by Australians that have been excluded from consideration for the award. It seemed like a reasonable argument to me, and I argued, not very well as it happens, for a change to be considered to the award conditions which would allow such works to be entered. Some readers didn't agree, indicating that Franklin had set up the award with specific conditions and that's the way it should stay. I guess this implies that if the entry requirements were to change then the award really won't be the "Miles Franklin" award any more, and continuing to use the original name would be an error, in judgement and in law. Well, I'm not going to argue the legal case one way or the other as I reckon I'd find myself on a very slippery slope very quickly. But on the judgement side I reckon a slight change to the entry rules along with a slight change to the award name - minor only - might suffice.
Now, the editorial staff of Australian Book Review have weighed into the discussion (May 2006 edition, Advances column), referencing Sullivan's original argument and attempting to counter each point she made. It's good to see magazines such as this discussing these subjects, they need a good airing. Unfortunately, the ABR comes across as being not only opposed to Sullivan's views, but also rather prickly about it. Their first point of contention is that Sullivan used Brooks's recent Pulitzer Prize win as a justification for her inclusion on the shortlist for the Miles Franklin, as if the Pulitzer were the only justification required. I didn't read Sullivan's piece like that. March was roundly praised by all and sundry when it was published last year with critics saying it was of the highest literary achievement and merit.
In March, a month before the Pulitzer winner was announced, I put together a prediction of works that might be considered for the award's longlist. Brooks's novel was mentioned as probably being worthy of inclusion on merit, but wouldn't be because of its subject matter. Sullivan was using it merely as a highly visible excluded novel. The timing of the Pulitzer was co-incidental, fortuitous or not. So for the ABR to say that Sullivan "provided another example of an old phenomenon in Australian journalism: when an artist does well overseas, especially in London or New York, we should promptly reward her in this country", comes across as harsh and just plain wrong. Surely we've moved beyond this "cultural cringe" line of thinking by now. Let's just agree that Brooks's novel has literary merit and leave it at that. Miles Frankin set up the award that carries her name about 50 years ago. Times have changed since then. A number of Australian writers are living and working overseas, and writing about subjects that do not feature Australia or the Australian way of life in any manner. With over a million of our citizens living in other nations this is hardly surprising. Denying the fact isn't going to change it. The ABR states that "It was Miles Franklin's money, and she knew what she was doing", and they are correct in both clauses. The additional point that needs to be made is that she knew what she was doing as it related to Australia in the 1950s. I don't think any of us suspect she foresaw the way the Australian literary landscape would have changed since that time. Maybe she wouldn't have been "jumping up and down in her grave" about the current exclusions, as Sullivan suggests, but she might well have been somewhat less gruntled than others might think.
Over the past few years the Miles Franklin Award has gradually started to impove its recognition value amongst the Australian reading public. And yet I wonder what percentage of those aware of the award are also aware of the entry requirements. I doubt the proportion would be very high. Most would just assume it is an Australian literary award for Australians. It's time to move on. Whether any new or amended award conditions state that works under consideration have to be written by Australians, or pertain to the Australian way or life, or a combination of the two is a matter for discussion. The first point is to agree on the fact that the award needs to change. And discussing the points in a logical and unemotional manner is the best way forward.
Kerryn Goldsworthy, over on her weblog A Fugitive Phenomenon, speculated earlier today about the novels that would appear on the 2006 Miles Franklin Award shortlist. And guess what? She picked the list exactly.
As an ex-judge of the award she's now attempting to cover her tracks but we all know it's the tea she's been drinking. Now if she'd just come clean on the brand I might be able to make a few bucks reading my own tea leaves and punting on the Booker later in the year.
In the meantime she states the list as:
Brian Castro, The Garden Book
Kate Grenville, The Secret River
Roger McDonald, The Ballad of Desmond Kale
Carrie Tiffany, Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living
Brenda Walker, The Wing of Night
A very strong list.
Matilda has featured the Tiffany and the Castro here over the past month or so. And you'd have to be living in a cave to miss out on the coverage Kate Grenville has received. The other novels will be featured here shortly. My reading list for the next few weeks should be pretty easy to pick then.
The shortlisted novels for the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction have been announced. And included on the list is Australia's Carrie Tiffany.
The shortlist:
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Beyond Black by Hilary Black
The Accidental by Ali Smith
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
Matilda featured Tiffany's novel here a few weeks back.
[Thanks to kimbofo over at the Reading Matters weblog for
the heads-up.]
In today's "Age" Jane Sullivan takes a potshot at the Miles Franklin Award, specifically at the conditions of entry.
To quote from the administrator's website: "The Miles Franklin Literary Award celebrates Australian character and creativity and nurtures the continuing life of literature based on Australia. It is awarded for the novel of the year which is of the highest literary merit and which presents Australian life in any of its phases." The kicker is in the phrase "Australian life in any of its phases". In the past this was interpreted to mean about
Australia, set in Australia and featuring Australian characters. Then Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse was disallowed entry in 1994, as was The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith by Peter Carey in 1995, and the restrictive nature of the interpretation was shown to be a bit of a mockery. Moorhouse's book featured Australian characters in a European setting but this was not deemed "Australian enough". The interpretation was subsequently extended to allow books such as Moorhouse's and his sequel, Dark Palace, won the award in 2001.
As another twist, the criteria of the "novel" has been subverted in the past with Hannie Rayson's play, Life After George, being shortlisted in 2001. Now Sullivan raises the question of Geraldine Brooks's novel, March, which has just win the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction but which is ineligible for the Miles Franklin, given that it includes no relationship to Australian life in any form. In passing she also mentions Delia Falconer's novel, The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers, which finds itself in the same boat. As Sullivan puts it: "Times have changed in a good way for our books, and the prize hasn't kept up. When Miles Franklin first had the idea for the prize in her name, Australian literature about Australia was an endangered species that needed all the nurturing, protection and encouragement it could get."
I agree. Australian authors are out and about in the world, and neither they, nor Australia itself, are isolated away from the global village. If the Miles Franklin Award is the pre-eminent literary prize in Australia, then it must reflect the world in which it finds itself. It's time for us to grow up and move on.
Geraldine Brooks has been announced as the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for her novel March.
The winners of the 2006 Ditmar Awards (for Australian sf and fantasy) were
announced in Brisbane over the weekend.
Best Novel
Geodesica: Ascent by Sean Williams & Shane Dix
Best Novella or Novelette
"The Grinding House" by Kaaron Warren
Best Short Story
"Fresh Young Widow" by Kaaron Warren
Best Collected Work
Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales ed. Robert Hood & Robin Pen
Best Professional Artwork
Cover to Australian Speculative Fiction: A Genre Overview by Nick Stathopoulos
Best Fan Writer
Shane Jiraiya Cummings for Horrorscope
Best Fan Artist
Shane Parker for Conflux Poster Art
Best Fan Production
Australian SF Bullsheet, ed. Edwina Harvey & Ted Scribner
Best Fanzine
"Ticonderoga Online", ed. Russell B Farr, Liz Gryzb, Lyn Battersby
William Atheling Jr. Award
"Divided Kingdom: King Kong vs Godzilla" by Robert Hood
Best New Talent
Rjurik Davidson
Best Professional Achievement
Robert Dobson, Robert Hoge, Kate Eltham, Heather Gammage for Clarion South 2005
The shortlists for the 2006 NSW Premier's Literary awards have been announced.
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
March, Geraldine Brooks
Slow Man, J.M. Coetzee
The Secret River, Kate Grenville
The Marsh Birds, Eva Sallis
Dead Europe, Christos Tsiolkas
The Wing of Night, Brenda Walker
Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction
Dora B: A Memoir of My Mother, Josiane Behmoiras
Making 'Black Harvest': Warfare, Film-making and Living Dangerously in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, Bob Connolly
The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change, Tim Flannery
Hanoi, Adieu: A Bittersweet Memoir of French Indochina, Mandaley Perkins
East of Time, Jacob G. Rosenberg
Dirt Cheap: Life at the Wrong End of the Job Market, Elisabeth Wynhausen
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
Avenues & Runways, Aidan Coleman
The Kindly Ones, Susan Hampton
Broken/Open, Jill Jones
Suburban Anatomy, Penelope Layland
Blister Pack, David McCooey
Latecomers, Jaya Savige
NSW Prize for Literary Scolarship
Postcolonial Conrad: Paradoxes of Empire, Terry Collits
Dickens and Empire: Discourses of Class, Race and Colonialism in the Works of Charles Dickens, Grace Moore
Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature
The Glory Garage, Taghred Chandab & Nadia Jama
No Worries, Bill Condon
Theodora's Gift, Ursula Duborarsky
Magic or Madness, Justine Larbalestier
Lost Property, James Moloney
Hope Bay, Nicole Plüss
Patricia Wrightson Prize
The Secret World of Wombats, Jackie French
The Mostly True Story of Matthew and Trim, Cassandra Golds & Stephen Axelsen
Journey to Eureka, Kerry Greenwood
Naked Bunyip Dancing, Steven Herrick
How Hedley Hopkins Did a Dare, Paul Jennings
In the Monkey Forest, Kierin Meehan
Community Realtions Commission Award
The Secret River, Kate Grenville
The Butcher's Wife, Noëlle Janaczewska
Behind the Moon, Hsu-Ming Teo
Gleebooks Prize
The Third Try: Can the UN Work?, Alison Broinowski & James Wilkinson
Conquest: A New History of the Modern World, David Day
The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change, Tim Flannery
Beyond Right and Left: New Politics and the Culture Wars, David McKnight
Thunder From the Silent Zone: Re-thinking China, Paul Monk
Ending the Affair: The Decline of Television Current Affairs in Australia, Graeme Turner
UTS Award for New Writing
There is no shortlist for this award - the winner will be announced on 23rd May.
Play Award
Unspoken, Rebecca Clarke
Smashed, Lally Katz
Strangers in Between, Thomas Murphy
Stalking Matilda, Tee O'Neill
Non Parlo de Salo, Christos Tsiolkas & Spiro Economopoulos
Script Writing Award
Ten Canoes, Rolf de Heer
Girl in a Mirror, Kathy Drayton
Call Me 'Mum', Kathleen Mary Fallon
Revealing Gallipoli, Wain Fimeri
We Can Be Heroes, Chris Lilley
Love My Way, ep.20, 'Which Way Home', Tony McNamara
The winners will be announced at the Sydney Writers' Festival on May 23rd at the Art Gallery of NSW.
The shortlists for Book of the Year, awarded by the Children's Book Council of Australia, have been announced.
Older Readers
Burke, J.C. The Story of Tom Brennan
Caswell, Brian Double Exposure
Condon, Bill No Worries
Crowley, Cath Chasing Charlie Duskin
Jonsberg, Barry It's Not All About You, Calma!
Moloney, James Lost Property
Younger Readers
Bateson, Catherine Millie and the Night Heron
Fensham, Elizabeth Helicopter Man Flynn, Pat (Illus. Chantal Stewart) To the Light
Gleitzman, Morris Once
Godwin, Jane (Illus. Drahos Zak) The True Story of Mary: Who wanted to stand on her head
Jennings, Paul How Hedley Hopkins did a dare, robbed a grave, made a new friend who might not have really been there at all, and while he was at it committed a terrible sin which everyone was doing even though he didn't know it
Early Childhood
Bourke, Nike (Illus. Stella Danalis) What the Sky Knows
Dubosarsky, Ursula (Illus. David Mackintosh) Rex
Matthews, Cecily (Illus. Freya Blackwood) Emily's Rapunzel Hair
Niland, Deborah Annie's Chair
Shanahan, Lisa (Illus. Emma Quay) Daddy's Having a Horse
Watts , Frances (Illus. David Legge) Kisses for Daddy
Picture Book
Crossett, Warren (Text: Jacqueline Harvey) The Sound of the Sea
Danalis, Stella (Text: Nike Bourke) What the Sky Knows
Lissiat, Amy (Text: Colin Thompson) The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley
Riddle, Tohby Irving the Magician
Sheehan, Peter (Text: John Heffernan) The Island
Winch, John Run, Hare, Run! The story of a drawing
Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
Brian, Janeen Hoosh! Camels in Australia
Brim, Warren and Eglitis, Anna Creatures of the Rainforest: Two artists explore Djabugay country
Davidson, Leon Scarecrow Army: The ANZACS at Gallipoli
Jamal, Nadia and Chandab, Taghred The Glory Garage: Growing up Lebanese Muslim in Australia
Long, John (Illus. Brian Choo, with maps by Segei Pisarevsky) The Big Picture Book: See life on Earth unfolding through time
Stewart, Robin Charles Darwin's Big Idea: The revolutionary theory of evolution
The 10 novels shortlisted for the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award have been announced. The list
consists of:
Graceland by Chris Abani
Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam
Havoc in Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett
The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe
An Altered Light by Jens Christian Grøndahl
Breaking the Tongue by Vyvyane Loh
Don't Move by Margaret Mazzantini
The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra
The Master by Colm Tóibin
The Logogryph by Thomas Wharton
Novels are entered for this award on the recommendations of various libraries around the world. Using the number of nominating libraries as a quick guide to the likely winner we have The Master by Colm Tóibin, with 17 nominations, getting the award from The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra, with 4. And what do you know, Paddy Power betting has Tóibin at 2-1, followed by Abani at 4-1, and Khadra at 6-1.
In "The Courier-Mail" over the weekend (and elsewhere I think, as I'm sure I read this in another paper), Susanna Clarke gives a potted history of the Miles Franklin Award from inception to date. She revisits some of the controversies that have affected the award, such as the Helen Demidenko/Darville (and now Dale) affair from 1995, and provides one-line summaries of the past 8 winners.
For example: 2004 The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard was an odd choice: old-fashioned writing, a nasty anti-Australian streak and unconvincing characterisation.
John Hughes has been announced as the winner of the 2006 National Biography Award, sponsored by the State Library of New South Wales. The book, The Idea of Home, was also the winner of last year's NSW Premier's Literary Award for non-fiction.
William Elliott's manuscript, The Pilo Family Circus, has been named the inaugural winner of the ABC Fiction Award. The award brings with it a prize of $10,000 and publication by ABC Books. Elliott's work was chosen from 900 entries, and a short-list of 25. The 2007 ABC Fiction Award is now open and entries must be received by May 30 2006.
[Thanks to Ron at Mountain Murmurs for the link.]
It's good to see that the book webpages of Brisbane's "Courier-Mail" have been given a decent overhaul. The previous version hardly had any literary content at all. Chief amongst the new offerings is Suzanna Clarke's piece on the standing of the Miles Franklin Award within the Australian literary community: "Always a Story".
I was certainly pleased to see Alex Miller making a point I heartily endorse: "Winning the Miles Franklin is the only thing that gets you out of the book pages and into the news pages. "You get fabulous publicity, but the response by the bookshops is crap. When the Booker comes out, the shortlisted books are in shop windows for weeks. That doesn't happen with the Miles Franklin." And, to be frank, I can't see why not. The sales of last year's winner, The White Earth, had practically dried to a trickle before
McGann's win. After that it went gangbusters, pushing up towards 40,000 copies. Surely something to be learned there.
The nominations for the 2006 Hugo and Campbell Awards have been released. Congratulations, and good luck, to Margo Lanagan, nominated in the Best Short Story category for "Singing My Sister Down", and to K.J. Bishop, nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of 2004 or 2005.
The Hugo Awards are the readers' choice awards in the science fiction and fantasy fields, and are voted on by members of the year's sf Worldcon (in Los Angeles this year from 23-27 August). You have to be a member (either supporting or attending) to vote. Details of the convention are available at their website. There will be a fair contingent of Australians in LA this year, including yours truly, as we are ramping up our bid for the 2010 Worldcon to be held in Melbourne. We'll be running two bidding parties during the convention and will have a table staffed with volunteers at other times to answer any questions. Further details will be released as things are finalised. If you're there stop by and say hello.
The shortlist for the 2006 National Biography Award has been announced.
"The National Biography Award was established in 1996 to encourage the highest standards of writing biography and autobiography and to promote public interest in those genres. The National Biography Award is administered by the State Library of New South Wales on behalf of the award's benefactors, Geoffrey Cains and Michael Crouch." - from the award website.
John Hughes: The Idea of Home: Autobiographical Essays (Giramondo Press)
William McInnes, A Man's Got to Have a Hobby (Hodder)
Alasdair McGregor: Frank Hurley: A Photographer's Life (Viking)
John Edwards: Curtin's Gift: Reinterpreting Australia's Greatest Prime Minister (Allen&Unwin)
Mary Ellen Jordan: Balanda: My Year in Arnhem Land (Allen&Unwin)
The prize is worth $20,000, and the winner will be announced on March 30th.
The longlist for the 2006 Miles Franklin Award has been announced with Victorian writers dominating the 12 novels.
Knitting, Anne Bartlett
The Garden Book by Brian Castro
The Secret River by Kate Grenville
An Accidental Terrorist by Steven Lang
The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald
Prochownik's Dream by Alex Miller
Sunnyside, Joanna Murray-Smith
A Case of Knives, Peter Rose
The Broken Shore by Peter Temple
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas
The Wing of Night by Brenda Walker
The shortlist will be announced on 27th April, and the winner on June 22nd.
The longlist for the 2006 Miles Franklin Award will be announced tomorrow so I thought I might throw out a few suggestions for what might be on the list. Last year 43 novels were entered for the prize, with 12 making the longlist and five on the shortlist.
Possibilities:
Winter Journey by Diane Armstrong
Watershed by Fabienne Bayet-Charlton
The Garden Book by Brian Castro
Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee
The Patron Saint of Eels by Gregory Day
Grace by Robert Drewe
The Secret River by Kate Grenville
Surrender by Sonya Hartnett
Out of the Silence by Wendy James
Original Face by Nicholas Jose
Sandstone by Stephen Lacey
An Accidental Terrorist by Steven Lang
The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger MacDonald
Prochownik's Dream by Alex Miller
The Marsh Birds by Eva Sallis
The Broken Shore by Peter Temple
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
Affection by Ian Townsend
Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas
Road Story by Julienne van Loon
The Wing of Night by Brenda Walker
Which is a much longer list than I thought I'd end up with when I started this little exercise. There is always a bit of a problem chosing which books might appear on the shortlist due to the conditions of the award. In the past novels by authors such as Peter Carey have been deemed ineligible as they did not present an aspect of Australian life. It is also possible for non-Australian authors to be listed such as Matthew Kneale with his novel English Passengers. And let's not forget that Hannie Rayson was shortlisted for her play Life After George. As a consequence the following may, or may not, be deemed ineligible:
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
And the following are pretty much certain to be omitted:
March by Geraldine Brooks
The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers by Delia Falconer
The God of Spring by Arabella Edge
Do I think I've covered it all? No, not a chance. There is bound to be some novel that pops up, a debut perhaps, that will sneak in under the radar. And a good thing too.
Kate Grenville has been announced as the overall winner of the 2006 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best Book, for her novel The Secret River. The Best First Book Award went to Mark McWatt from Guyana for Suspended Sentences: Fictions of Atonement.
Publishers Allen and Unwin have announced that the 2006 Australian/Vogel Literary Award is now open, and that entries are now being accepted. The entry form can be found on their award webpage. Be aware that the entry form is a PDF File.
The award is for an unpublished manuscript (novel or non-fiction) by a young Australian writer, and is worth $20,000 plus royalties to the winner. The winner gains a guarantee of publication. It is not unusual for runners-up to be published as well. Entrants must normally be a resident of Australia and under the age of 35 years on 31 May 2006, ie born after 31 May 1971. Entries must be lodged, accompanied by the offical entry form, by 31 May 2006.
The longlist for the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction has been announced and a few Australian books have made the grade. Included are: Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones, and Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany.
The shortlist for the award will be announced on 26th April. The New Writers award shortlist will be announced on 3rd May. The Awards ceremony will be held on 6th June.
The winners of the 2006 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature have been href="http://www.arts.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?area_id=10&content_id=64">announced.
$10,000 South Australian Premier's Award for Literature
Sixty Lights by Gail Jones (Vintage)
$15,000 Award for Children's Literature (143 entries)
It's Not All About You, Calma! by Barry Jonsberg (Allen & Unwin)
$15,000 Award for Fiction (114 entries)
Sixty Lights by Gail Jones (Vintage)
$10,000 Award for Innovation (22 entries)
<More or Less Than> 1-100 by MTC Cronin (Shearsman Books)
$15,000 Award for Non-Fiction (154 entries)
Velocity by Mandy Sayer (Vintage)
$15,000 John Bray Poetry Award (90 entries)
Totem by Luke Davies (Allen and Unwin)
$10,000 Jill Blewett Playwright's Award for the Creative Development of a play script by a South Australian Writer (8 entries)
This Uncharted Hour by Finegan Kruckemeyer
$10,000 Award for an Unpublished Manuscript by a SA Emerging Writer to be Published by Wakefield Press (32 entries)
The Quakers by Rachel Hennessy
$15,000 Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship (7 entries)
Mike Ladd
$15,000 Carclew Fellowship (6 entries)
Christine Harris
[Thanks to Wendy James for the notice.]
Jason Steger, in "The Age", reports that writers in Victoria will this year vie for the richest literary prize in Australia. "The annual Melbourne Prize, which was awarded last year for urban sculpture, is focusing this year on writing. It will give $60,000 to one writer in recognition of a body of work, $30,000 to a writer under 40 for "best writing", and a $3000 "people's choice" prize to the finalist who gets the most votes from the public." Considering that the Miles Franklin award carries a prize of $42,000 and the various state literary awards range from $15,000 to $25,000, this is a major prize indeed. Entries open on May 15 and close on July 14. Finalists will be announced in September and the winners on November 15.
The voting form for the 2006 Ditmar Awards has now been released [PDF file].
These awards honour Australian works in the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror. To be eligible to vote you must be a supporting or attending member of Conjure, the 2006 National Science Fiction Convention being held this year in Brisbane over 14-17 April.
So these are reader awards - the Australian version of the Hugos. To put it mildly, there
are some strange things about this ballot. I make no comment on the worth of the nominees: I take it as given that they are all worthy of being on this final list. I just think things could have been handled differently. As a member of the Natcon committee advising on these matters I made my views plain yesterday to the rest of the committee. To no avail it seems.
Margo Lanagan's story, "Singing My Sister Down", has made the final ballot for the Short Story Category of the 2005 Nebula Awards. These are presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and are generally quite good indicators of the works that will come under consideration for the Hugo Awards later in the year.
[Link via Margo's blog Among Amid Awhile.]
The winners of the 2005 Aurealis Awards have been announced.The awards ceremony was held in Brisbane on Saturady February 25th. The awards are presented for best long and short Australian fiction in the fields of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Young Adult and Children's literature.
Peter McNamara Convenors Award
Grant Stone
Science Fiction Novel
Eclipse, KA Bedford
Science Fiction Short Story
"Slow and Ache", Trent Jamieson
Fantasy Novel
Blade of Fortriu: Book 2 The Bridei Chronicles, Juliet Marillier
Fantasy Short Story
"Once Giants Roamed the Earth", Rosaleen Love and "The Greater Death of Saito Saku", Richard Harland
Horror Novel
No award
Horror Short Story
"Pater Familias", Lee Battersby
Young Adult Novel
Alyzon Whitestarr, Isobelle Carmody
Young Adult Short Story
"Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case", Garth Nix
Children Long Fiction
Drowned Wednesday, Garth Nix
Children Short Story
"Piccolo & Annabel 2: The Disastrous Party", Stephen Axelson
Golden Aurealis Novel
Alyzon Whitestarr, Isobelle Carmody
Golden Aurealis Short Story
"Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case", Garth Nix
The shortlists for the 2006 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature have been announced. The winners will be announced on March 5th. The shortlists are:
$15,000 Award for children's literature (143 entries)
The Running Man by Michael Bauer (Omnibus Books)
Fireshadow by Anthony Eaton (University of Queensland Press)
Jetty Rats by Phillip Gwynne (Penguin)
Soraya the Storyteller by Rosanne Hawke (Lothian Books)
It's Not All About You, Calma! by Barry Jonsberg (Allen & Unwin)
The Spare Room by Kathryn Lomer (University of Queensland Press)
$15,000 Award for fiction (114 entries)
The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers by Delia Falconer (Picador)
The Ghost Writer by John Harwood (Vintage)
Sixty Lights by Gail Jones (Random House Australia)
The White Earth by Andrew McGahan (Allen & Unwin)
The Marsh Birds by Eva Sallis (Allen & Unwin)
The Last Ride by Denise Young (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
$10,000 Award for innovation (22 entries)
<More or Less Than> 1-100 by MTC Cronin (Shearsman Books)
The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers by Delia Falconer (Picador)
The Bone House by Beverley Farmer (Giramondo)
East of Time by Jacob G. Rosenberg (Brandl & Schlesinger)
$15,000 Award for non-fiction (154 entries)
Papunya: A Place Made After the Story by Geoffrey Bardon (deceased) and James Bardon (Melbourne University Press)
Twilight of Love by Robert Dessaix (Picador)
Joe Cinque's Consolation by Helen Garner (Picador)
Professional Savages by Roslyn Poignant (UNSW Press)
Velocity by Mandy Sayer (Vintage)
$15,000 John Bray poetry award (90 entries)
Wolf Notes by Judith Beveridge (Giramondo)
Walking to Point Clear by David Brooks (Brandl and Schlesinger)
Totem by Luke Davies (Allen & Unwin)
Friendly Fire by Jennifer Maiden (Giramondo)
Freehold by Geoff Page (Brandl and Schlesinger)
The Well Mouth by Phillip Salom (Freemantle Arts Centre Press)
$10,000 Jill Blewett Playwright's award for the creative development of a playscript by a South Australian writer (8 entries)
Black Crow Lullabies by Duncan Graham
The Uncharted Hour by Finegan Kruckemeyer
The Sea Bride by Caleb Lewis
$10,000 Award for an unpublished manuscript by a SA emerging writer to be published by Wakefield Press (32 entries)
Life Before Plastic by Libby Angel
Black Dust Dancing by Tracy Crisp
Anthems for Before by Sonja Dechian
The Quakers by Rachel Hennessy
Play the Devil by Henry Sheppard
The regional winners of the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize have now been announced.
In the South East Asia and South Pacific region the winners are: Kate Grenville with The Secret River as Best Book, and Tash Aw with The Harmony Silk Factory as Best First Book.
The overall winners will be announced on 14th March 2006, here in Melbourne.
The shortlist for the 22nd annual William L. Crawford Award, presented by the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, has been released, and Australian writer Anna Tambour has been included for her novel, Spotted Lily. The award is presented to a new fantasy writer.
[Thanks to Jonathan Strahan's blog Notes from Coode Street for the item.]
Strange goings-on...
The Literary Saloon alerted us to the presence of the announcement of the shortlisted novels for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' prize. Oddly enough, this announcement is over on the Commonwealth Foundation page, rather than the Commonwealth Writers' Prize page where you'd really expect it to appear.
Anyway, it's there and available, along with the previously advised note that the regional winners will be announced on February 6. So how come "The Age" today announces the winners of the South-East Asia and South Pacific region, both best novel and best first book? And how is it that their "winner" of the best book award wasn't even shortlisted?
Looks like some wires have been well and truly crossed here.
The Regional Shortlists for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize have been announced. Prizes are awarded for Best Book and Best First Book in each of the four Commonwealth Regions: Africa, Canada and Caribbean, Eurasia (Europe and South Asia), South East Asia and South Pacific. After the regional prizes are decided, overall Commonwealth winners of each category are then announced.
The list of works is quite long and should be up on the website soon. In the meantime, the following books have been shortlisted in the South East Asia and South Pacific region:
Best Book
Sandstone by Stephen Lacey
Grace by Robert Drewe
Surrender by Sonya Hartnett
March by Geraldine Brooks
Blindsight by Maurice Gee
The Marsh Birds by Eva Sallis
The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers by Delia Falconer
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald
Best First Book
Affection by Ian Townsend
Winter Journey by Diane Armstrong
The Grasshopper Shoe by Carolyn Carolyn
An Accidental Terrorist by Steven Lang
The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw
Road Story by Julienne Van Loon
Everyday Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
The Patron Saint of Eels by Gregory Day
Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs by Linda Olsson
A Red Silk Sea by Gillian Ransfead
It's interesting to note that nomination in a particular region is based on citizenship, so Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee appears on the African shortlist.
From the Young Adult Library Services Association website: "The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. It is named for a Topeka, Kansas school librarian who was a long-time active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association. The award is sponsored by Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association."
And this year two Australian books were named as 2006 Honor Books: Black Juice by Margo Lanagan, and I am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak.
[Thanks to Margo for the link from her Among Amid Awhile weblog.]
The 2005 Preliminary Nebula ballot has been announced.
Jack Dann's alternate universe novel The Rebel: An Imagined Life of James Dean appears on the long list of
novels.
The Nebula Awards are voted on by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for excellence in the fields of sf and fantasy. They have an FAQ available if you need to know more about the awards. The winners will be announced during the Nebula Awards weekend, May 4-7 2006, in Tempe, Arizona.
The finalists for the 2005 Aurealis Awards have been announced. The awards are presented for best long and short Australian fiction in the fields of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Young Adult and Children's. The awards ceremony will be held on Saturday 25th February 2006, in the Queensland Conservatorium, South Bank, Brisbane.
Entries for the 2006 Miles Franklin Award have now closed and the convenors of the award, Trust, have announced the relevant 2006 dates.
16 March 2006 - Longlist announced
27 April 2006 - Shortlist announced
22 June 2006 - Winner announced
I'm especially appreciative of the two month gap between the announcements of the shortlist and the winner: it gives me time to finish reading the nominated books. Given some of my statements in the middle of this year I'll be paying particular attention to the publicity given the award post 27 April.
The longlist for the 2006 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has been announced and I've found the following
books by Australian authors hidden away in the long, long list:
Cape Grimm, Carmel Bird
The Broken Book, Susan Johnson
Sixty Lights, Gail Jones
A Private Man, Malcolm Knox
The Philosopher's Doll, Amanda Lohrey
The White Earth, Andrew McGahan
Snowleg, Nicholas Shakespeare
The shortlist will be announced on 5th April 2006, and the winner on 14th June 2006.
The only previous Australian winner of the award was Remembering Babylon by David Malouf, in 1996. The following Australian novels have been shortlisted for the award: The Glade Within the Grove by David Foster in 1998; True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey in 2002; and The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard in 2005. Of the books longlisted for this year's award, I've covered only The White Earth and Sixty Lights. I'll have to see what I can do about the others.
Poet Fay Zwicky has been announced as the winner of the 2005 Patrick White Award.
"The annual prize is given to an Australian writer whose work, in the opinion of the award committee, has not received adequate recognition." Previous winners of the award have included Amy Witting, Thea Astley, Dal Stivens, Randolph Stow, Gwen Harwood and Christina Stead.
Margo Lanagan has been announced as winner of two awards at this year's World Fantasy Convention held in Madison, Wisconsin, over the weekend.
She was announced as winner in the Short Fiction category for "Singing My Sister Down", and in the Collection catgeory for Black Juice.
I'd have to check but I believe this is the first time an Australian author has won a World Fantasy Award.
See Locus Magazine for a full list of results.
[Update: I was incorrect in stating that Margo was the first Australian winner of a World Fantasy Award, Shaun Tan won for Best Artist in 2001, and Jack Dann and Janeen Webb won for Best Anthology in 1999 with Dreaming Down Under. My apologies.]
In an article titled Why the Booker is Highly Prized in "The Times" this weekend, Danuta Kean gives a rundown on how lucrative a win really is, and concludes by saying: "Nobody really loses with the Booker. Even the most controversial choices sell - Keri Hulme's The Bone People sold 38,000 copies in 1985 and is still in print. Booker winners never go out of print - for authors looking for immortality in an age when publishers delete books with shameless haste that is the biggest prize of all."
Maybe the author should take a look back to the beginning of the Booker history: Something to Answer For by P.H. Newby is impossible to buy outside of antiquarian bookshops. Abebooks.com has its cheapest copy listed at $US90.98, with other copies of the first edition ranging up to $US750. Not exactly "in print".
The winners of the 2005 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were announced last night.
The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
Surrender, Sonya Hartnett
Viking/Penguin
The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction
Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev, Robert Dessaix
Picador/Pan Macmillan
The C J Dennis Prize for Poetry
<More or Less Than>1-100, MTC Cronin
Shearsman Books
The Louis Esson Prize for Drama
The Spook, Melissa Reeves
Company B. Belvoir St.
The Prize for Young Adult Fiction
So Yesterday, Scott Westerfeld
Penguin Books Australia
The Prize for Science Writing
Astonishing Animals, Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten
Text Publishing
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
Living in a Material World, Randa Abdel-Fattah
Griffith Review
The Village Roadshow Prize for Screen Writing
Revealing Gallipoli, Wain Fimeri
ABC Television
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
I Hate Martin Amis et al, Peter Barry
The Grollo Ruzzene Foundation Prize for Writing about Italians in Australia
A Spoonful of Zucchero, Kate Taylor
Little Red Apple Publishing
John Banville has won this year's Man Booker with The Sea, and in 1978 Iris Murdoch won with The Sea, The Sea. Do I see a pattern here? Are we moving downwards, water-wise? How about The Puddle, or maybe just The? I'll keep you posted.
John Banville's novel The Sea has been announced as the winner of the £50,000 Man Booker Prize.
Banville was listed as third favourite behind Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro and was selected as the winner on the deciding vote of judging panel chair John Sutherland. It appears that the panel was split over Banville and Ishiguro. This turns around the previous encounter between the two authors in 1989 when Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day was the winner over Banville's The Book of Evidence.
The shortlisted novels for 2005 were:
The Sea by John Banville
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Accidental by Ali Smith
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
While I was away the winners of the 2005 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were announced.
The winners were:
Fiction Book Award
Tim Winton for The Turning (Pan Macmillan Australia)
Emerging Queensland Author - Manuscript Award
Patrick Holland for The Long Road of the Junkmailer
Unpublished Indigenous Writer - The David Unaipon Award
Yvette Holt for Anonymous Premonition
Non-Fiction Book Award
Geoffrey Bardon and James Bardon for Papunya - A Place Made After the Story (Melbourne University Publishing)
History Book Award
Shane White and Graham White for The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History Through Songs, Sermons and Speech (Beacon Press)
Children's Book Award
Prue Mason for Camel Rider (Penguin Books Australia)
Young Adult Book Award
Joanne Horniman for Secret Scribbled Notebooks (Allen & Unwin)
Science Writers Award
Elizabeth Finkel for Stem Cells (ABC Books)
Poetry Collection - Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award
Sarah Day for The Ship (Brandl & Schlesinger)
Australian Short Story Collection - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award
John Clanchy for Vincenzo's Garden (University of Queensland Press)
Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate - the Harry Williams Award
Hedley Thomas for Sickness in the System (Queensland Newspapers)
Film Script - Pacific Film and Television Commission Award
Jacquelin Perske for Little Fish (Porchlight Films)
Television Script - QUT Creative Industries Award
Sue Smith for RAN: Remote Area Nurse - Episode 5 - Blue Hawaii (Chapman Pictures Pty Ltd)
Drama Script (Stage) Award
Van Badham for Black Hands/Dead Section (LAMDA Company)
Encouragement and Development Prize
Simon Cleary for The Comfort of Figs
The shortlisted works for the 2005 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards have been announced. The winners will be annonuced on October 17. Full details of the list, along with the judges' reports, can be found at the State Library of Victoria website.
The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
Surrender, Sonya Hartnett Viking/Penguin
Sixty Lights, Gail Jones Vintage/Random House
Affection, Ian Townsend Fourth Estate /Harper Collins
The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction
Degenerates and Perverts: The 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art, Eileen Chanin and Steven Miller The Miegunyah Press / Melbourne University Publishing
Beach Crossings: Voyaging across Times, Cultures and Self, Greg Dening The Miegunyah Press / Melbourne University Publishing
Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev, Robert Dessaix Picador/Pan Macmillan
Joe Cinque's Consolation: A True Story of Death, Grief and the Law, Helen Garner Picador/Pan Macmillan
Bypass: The Story of a Road, Michael McGirr Picador/Pan Macmillan
The C J Dennis Prize for Poetry
<More or Less Than>1-100, MTC Cronin Shearsman Books
Doppler Effect, John Kinsella Salt Publishing
Firelick, Morgan Yasbincek Fremantle Arts Centre Press
The Louis Esson Prize for Drama
The Frail Man, Anthony Crowley Playbox /Currency
Blowback, David Pledger Not Yet, It's Difficult The Spook, Melissa
Reeves Company B. Belvoir St.
The Prize for Young Adult Fiction
The Running Man, Michael Gerard Bauer Omnibus Books
Secret Scribbled Notebooks, Joanne Horniman Allen & Unwin
So Yesterday, Scott Westerfeld Penguin Books Australia
The Prize for Science Writing
The Land Of Flowers: An Australian Environment on the Brink, Irene Cunningham Otford Press
Stem Cells: Controversy at the Frontiers of Science, Elizabeth Finkel ABC Books Astonishing Animals, Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten Text Publishing
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
Living in a Material World, Randa Abdel-Fattah Griffith Review
'Kangaroo Court': Family Law in Australia, John Hirst 'Quarterly Essay' Black Inc
Mission Impossible: The Sheikhs, the U.S. and the Future of Iraq, Paul McGeogh 'Quarterly Essay' Black Inc
The Village Roadshow Prize for Screen Writing
Revealing Gallipoli, Wain Fimeri ABC Television
Little Fish, Jacquelin Perske Porchlight FIlms
Look Both Ways, Sarah Watt Hibiscus Films
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
I Hate Martin Amis et al, Peter Barry
'Days Like Televisi...Days Like Television' and Other Stories, James Hawthorne
The Timeball Philosophers, Anita Punton
The Grollo Ruzzene Foundation Prize for Writing about Italians in Australia Martino's Story, Lyn Chatham Peter Bruno
Per l'Australia: The Story of Italian Migration, Julia Church The Miegunyah Press/Melbourne University Publishing
A Spoonful of Zucchero, Kate Taylor Little Red Apple Publishing
Victorian Andrew O'Connor, author of Tuvalu, has been announced as the winner of the 2005 "Australian"/Vogel Literary Award. 'The judges - Jean Bedford, John Dale, Hilary McPhee and Liam Davison - said Tuvalu was "always surprising" and that its prose was "assured and fluid and the observations genuinely original". It will be published next year by Allen & Unwin, a co-sponsor of the prize.' I look forward to it. I have yet to read a winner of this award which can be considered less than worthy. The age limit of 35 is also a bonus. While the authors are still young - especially for some of us who are rather longer in the tooth - they are not just out of high school, and have had a chance to get a bit of life-experience. The novels are all the better for it.
The shortlist for the 2005 "Australian"/Vogel Literary Award has now been announced. The award of $20,000 is presented to an Australian-resident writer under 35 years of age for an original unpublished manuscript of fiction or Australian history or biography. The shortlisted works are:
Blue by Christina Armstrong
Trevalyan by Natalie Kershaw
Crossing Against the Red by Stephen Martin
Fishing Secrets by Tom Murray
Tuvalu by Andrew O'Connor
The winner will be announced in Sydney tomorrow, Tuesday 20th September. It's odd that the "Australian", as co-sponsor of the award, should release the details of the shortlist in the print edition, but seem to have no mention of it on their website. As I've said before, their search and indexing facilities leave a lot to be desired.
The Shortlisted novels for the 2005 Man Booker Prize have been announced. That list is:
The Sea by John Banville
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Accidental by Ali Smith
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
All books are from major publishers this year with Hamish Hamilton and Faber & Faber having two books on the list each.
Ishiguro is the only previous winner of the award. My guess is that it will be a contest between Banville and Barnes.
The winner will be announced on Monday 10th October.
The Ned Kelly Awards were presented by the Crime Writers Association of Australia last Thursday night. The winners were:
Best Novel
Lost by Michael Robotham
Best First Novel
A Private Man by Malcolm Knox
Best True Crime
Joe Cinque's Consolation by Helen Garner (tie)
Mr Big by Tony Reeves (tie)
Lifetime Achievement Award
Stuart Coupe
The Ned Kelly Awards are to be presented tonight, at The Night Cat in Fitzroy, by the Crime Writers' Association of Australia.
I'd like to be able to provide you with a list of nominees but, try as I might, I can't find the list anywhere on the net. It may be out there somewhere, just playing hard to get.
The best I can find is a list of nominees and winners up to 2003.
The official site of the Crime Writers' Association at "http://www.thecwaa.net/" is dead, or not showing anything at least. The page is there but the HTML source has no content.
So what's going on? Isn't there anyone out there running a web site for the Kelly's? Sure it takes a bit of work to set one up - though, in this case, the bulk of the work has already been done - but there must be someone with the enthusiasm for it. And once the site is up it only needs to be updated twice a year, once with the nominees and once after the announcement of the winners.
So why don't I do it? Well, I'm already looking after pages for the Miles Franklin Award and the Australian/Vogel Award, both of which are over-due for a revamp.
Has the CWAA died the death? Enquiring minds, etc etc...
[Warning: don't try to follow any sub-page links you might find from "www.thecwaa.net", they lead to "adult" pages.]
Gay Bilson's book Plenty: Digressions on Food has won the "Age" Book of the Year Award.
The winners of this year's awards were announced on Friday 19th August.
Non-Fiction
Plenty: Digressions on Food, Gay Bilson
Poetry
The Colosseum, Dipti Saravanamuttu
Fiction
Sixty Lights, Gail Jones
The Australian Children's Book of the Year Awards have been announced, with the winners being:
Older Readers
The Running Man, Michael Gerard Bauer
Honour books:
Fireshadow, Anthony Eaton
By the River, Steven Herrick
Younger Readers
The Silver Donkey, Sonya Hartnett
Honour books:
A Horse Called Elvis, John Heffernan
Billy Mack's War, James Roy
Early Childhood
Where is the Green Sheep?, Mem Fox, illustrated by Judy Horacek
Honour books:
Mutt Dog!, Stephen Michael King
Seven More Sleeps, Margaret Wild, illustrated by Donna Rawlins
Picture Book
Are We There Yet? A Journey Around Australia, Alison Lester
Honour books:
Belonging, Jeannie Baker
Refugees, David Miller
Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
To the Moon and Back: The Amazing Australians at the Forefront of Space Travel Plus Fantastic Moon Facts, Bryan Sullivan with Jackie French, illustrated by Gus Gordon
Honour books:
Gogo Fish! The Story of the Western Australian State Fossil Emblem, John Long, illustrated by Jill Ruse and John Long
The Grief Book: Strategies for Young People, Elizabeth Vercoe with Kerry Abramowski
The longlist for the 2005 Man Booker Prize has now been announced. The novels listed are:
The Harmony Silk Factory, Tash Aw
The Sea, John Banville
Arthur & George, Julian Barnes
A Long Long Way, Sebastian Barry
Slow Man, J.M. Coetzee
In the Fold, Rachel Cusk
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
All For Love, Dan Jacobson
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, Marina Lewycka
Beyond Black, Hilary Mantel
Saturday, Ian McEwan
The People's Act of Love, James Meek
Shalimar the Clown, Salman Rushdie
The Accidental, Ali Smith
On Beauty, Zadie Smith
This Thing of Darkness, Harry Thompson
This is the Country, William Wall
I'm a bit disconcerted by the lack of Australian entries on the list. I thought Australian fiction has had a very strong year with the Drewe, Grenville, Hartnett, and McGahan as standouts. It may well be that the publishers didn't enter the books for the prize, but the
judges can call in books they feel need to be considered. The only Australian book on the list is Slow Man by Coetzee, which Ladbrokes has at 20/1. They must have seen an advance copy, as I don't think the book has even been published yet.
The favourites with Ladbrokes at this time are: Barnes 4/1, McEwan 5/1, Rushdie 7/1, Jacobson 8/1, and Mantel 8/1. You can see the full list and the odds on the "Daily Telegraph" site.
The Winners of the 2005 Hugo Awards for excellence in the field of science fiction have been announced.
The major winners were:
Novel: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Novella: "The Concrete Jungle" by Charles Stross
Novelette: "The Faery Handbag" by Kelly Link
Short Story: "Travels with My Cats" by Mike Resnick
Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: The Incredibles
Fanzine: Plotka edited by Alison Scott, Steve Davies and Mike Scott
Fan Writer: David Langford
The 2006 World Science Fiction Convention will be held in Los Angeles, USA, 23-27 August, 2006.
The shortlisted works for the 2005 Age Book of the Year Awards have been released. The winners will be announced at the opening of the Melbourne Writers' Festival on Friday 19th August. The prize in each category is $10,000, with a further $10,000 for Book of the Year.
Non-Fiction
Plenty: Digressions on Food, Gay Bilson
A Certain Maritime Incident: The Sinking of SIEV X, Tony Kevin
Leaving Year Zero: Stories of Surviving Pol Pot's Cambodia, Richard Lunn
In Tasmania, Nicholas Shakespeare
Pig City: From the Saints to Savage Garden, Andrew Stafford
Poetry
More or Less Than 1-100, M.T.C. Cronin
Broken/Open, Jill Jones
Domain, Ian McBryde
Blister Pack, David McCooey
The Colosseum, Dipti Saravanamuttu
Fiction
March, Geraldine Brooks
Surrender, Sonya Hartnett
Sixty Lights, Gail Jones
Marsh Birds, Eva Sallis
I Have Kissed Your Lips, Gerard Windsor
[I must apologise to Dipti Saravanamuttu for not including a link to his poetry collection - I just couldn't find one.]
On March 12 this year Brisbane's "Courier-Mail" newspaper announced details of this year's "Book of the Year Awards". Specifically they stated that the closing date for entries would be April 15, with the shortlist released in early July, and the winner announced on August 6.
So I kept that date of early July in mind and checked back pretty regularly to see if the shortlist had been finalised. Nope. Nothing seemed to have been announced. The newspaper's website doesn't seem to have a search facility - well, maybe it does but I can't find it - so, in despair, I googled the awards this morning and came up with the list of books on the shortlist that was announced on July 15th. Great. Still can't figure out how to get to it from the paper's front page though.
Anyway the list:
The Running Man by Michael Gerard Bauer
The Silver Donkey by Sonya Hartnett
Secret Scribbled Notebooks by Joanne Horniman
Black Juice by Margo Lanagan
The Spare Roo by Kathryn Lomer
The emphasis of this year's award is on novels for young adults. And from all accounts (I've only read the Lanagan) the list is pretty strong.
Don't know why I've neglected to list the winners of the 2005 Ditmar Awards (given I won one of them back in the 1980s) but I've let them slide long enough. The awards are really titled the Australian National Science Fiction Achievement Awards, and are called the "Ditmars" after Ditmar Jensen who initiated them way back when. The 2005 Ditmars were presented at this year's Australian National Science Fiction Convention, Thylacon IV, held in Hobart in June.
Best Novel
The Crooked Letter, Sean Williams (HarperCollins Australia)
Best Collected Work
Black Juice, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin Australia)
Best Novella/Novelette
"The Last Days of Kali Yuga", Paul Haines (NFG Magazine, August 2004)
Best Short Story
"Singing My Sister Down", Margo Lanagan (Black Juice)
Best Professional Artwork
Kerri Valkova for the cover to The Black Crusade (Chimaera Publications)
Best Professional Achievement
Clarion South committee
Fan Achievement
Conflux convention committee
Fan Artist
Sarah Xu
Fanzine
The Bullsheet, ed Edwina Harvey & Ted Scribner
Fan Writer
Bruce Gillespie
Best New Talent
Paul Haines
The organisers also presented two further awards, not Ditmars, at the ceremony. William Atheling Jnr Award for Criticism or Review
(tie) Robert Hood, for his review of Weight of Water at HoodReviews; and Jason Nahrung for "Why are publishers afraid of horror" (BAM, Courier Mail, 20 March 2004)
The Peter McNamara Achievement Award
Jonathan Strahan
Andrew McGahan's The White Earth was last night announced as the winner of the 2005 Miles Franklin Award. "The Australian" referred to the book as "a psychologically complex tale of power, passion, dynasty and dispossession set in a landscape not too dissimilar to the Queensland wheatlands of the author's childhood."
"The Age" relegated the news of the annoucement to page 9, but at least carried a photo of the author, and reproduced the book jacket. Jason Steger, "The Age"'s literary editor wrote that: "The White Earth is a family saga set in Queensland's Darling Downs wheat belt that manages to tackle a number of contemporary political issues, including the question of native title and the relationship of white Australians to the land."
In "The Sydney Morning Herald", Catherine Keenan reported that, while the decision on the winner was strongly debated, the final result was unanimous. And that "when Andrew McGahan won Australia's richest literary gong yesterday, it caused barely a ripple of surprise. He was the most fancied and best-known author on a shortlist light on famous names. And his novel, The White Earth, was the most obviously prize-worthy, an ambitious, gothic-tinged saga of the land that perfectly fulfilled the criteria of literary merit combined with a focus on Australian life."
Interestingly enough, the readers' poll in "The Age" that was referred to here in Matilda yesterday, only had The White Earth as second favourite with 23% of the vote, behind The Submerged Cathedral with 27%. This was from a final tally of 133 votes. And for those who are now heartily sick of reading about the award I guess we can put it to rest for 10 months or so. What a relief.
"The Age" is running a readers' poll for the Miles Franklin Award tonight, which has produced some interesting results. At just after 9:00pm this evening, just after I voted the polling sat as follows:
Salt Rain - 16%
Sixty Lights - 9%
The White Earth - 20%
The Submerged Cathedral - 29%
The Gift of Speed - 23%
Just a tad different from my form guide. Still can't find out who won.
With the winner of the 2005 Miles Franklin Award being announced tonight, Jason Steger ponders , in today's "Age", if there is major crisis facing Australian literary fiction.
I don't think anyone is bemoaning the lack of quality, all entries on this year's list appear to me to be of the highest standard, but it's the lack of entires that is the most disturbing. Books are entered for the award by their publisher who, I believe, can enter as many as they wish. Scattered amongst Steger's article are the statistics for the number of those entries by year. He doesn't give them all but the list he provides comes out as:
1995 - 60
1996 - 64
1997 - 84
1998 - 44
2001 - 54
2002 - 39
2005 - 43
Not all that flash really. The organisers of the award are trying new ways to attract readers to the shortlist by adding stickers to the covers of the novels announcing their nomination. And that's a good start. But more needs to be done.
Steger states that the judges and organisers of the Miles Franklin Award look covetously at the publicity generated in the UK by the Man Booker Prize. Even half that level would be a huge boost. Yet the Booker didn't get there in one year, it had to work at it. I lived in the UK during the period from 1990-92 (covering the period of three prizes) and don't remember any major events being staged. The books were in the shops, they were publicised by posters, dump-bins and book-marks, and all the books received extra reviews in the couple of weeks leading up to the announcement of the award, but there was no television coverage. And that might just be where the Miles Franklin Award needs to start: get the publicity out into the shops and try to persuade the papers to run extra reviews of the shortlisted titles, and get one of the television networks, either free-to-air or pay-tv, to cover the awards event. A quick look through tonight's television programs doesn't show anything yet the award is being presented by the film director Gillian Armstrong. Last year the awards were introduced and presented by Cate Blanchett, so obviously the organisers are attempting to add a bit of glamour to the event. The next step is getting the telecast out there.
Yes, there is a crisis in Australian literary fiction. But I don't believe we can sit still and wait for "one really successful novel to bring people back", as Random House executive publisher Jane Palfreyman states in Steger's article. That will only attract readers to that author's other works, not to Australian literature as a whole. It is possible to raise Australian literary fiction's profile, it just takes a little thought, innovation and judicious investment of funds. Highlighting the Miles Franklin Award strikes me as a good place to start.
As a final note: good luck to all the authors shortlisted tonight. They would all be worthy winners.
The Known World by Edward P. Jones has been announced as the winner of the 2005 International Impac Dublin Literary Award, beating out our own Shirley Hazzard with The Great Fire.
I must have been asleep last week when the winner of the first Man International Booker Prize was announced. On Thursday June 2nd, the judging committee announced the winner as Ismail Kadaré, Albania's best-known poet and novelist, who has lived in France since 1990. In his survey of the shortlisted authors "The Australian"s Murray Waldren quoted Kadaré at 80/1. Not bad odds if you got them.
"The Sydney Morning Herald" 2005 Best Young Australian Novelists were awarded at the recently completed Sydney Writers' Festival. The Awards recognise novels published by Australians aged up to 35 in the past calendar year. The award's judges were Delia Falconer and Mardi McConnochie. Full details and previous winners were published in the "Herald" over the weekend.
The winners were:
Leigh Redhead for Peepshow
Nicholas Angel for Drown Them in the Sea
Craig Silvey for Rhubarb
Andrew Humphreys for Wonderful
Corrie Hosking for Ash Rain
The first nomination list for the Man Booker International Prize was announced a few months back, and while no Australians were included on the list it is a prize for which Australian are eligible, and for which they can compete against the rest of the literary world. In the most recent "Weekend Australian", Murray Waldren runs his eye over the candidates and gives his winning odds:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez 3/1
Philip Roth 5/1
Margaret Atwood 6/1
Milan Kundera 8/1
Naguib Mahfouz 10/1
Cynthia Ozick 14/1
Gunter Grass 16/1
John Updike 16/1
Kenzaburo Oe 25/1
A.B. Yehoshua 25/1
Ian McEwen 33/1
Stanislaw Lem 40/1
Doris Lessing 50/1
Antonio Tabucchi 50/1
Ismail Kadare 80/1
Muriel Spark 80/1
Tomas Eloy Martinez 120/1
Saul Bellow was a late scratching. The Man International Booker Prize is designed to slot into that gap just below the Nobel in the literary award hierarchy, and is to be awarded every second year. So the question needs to be asked: why include Nobel Laureates on the list? Haven't they been recognized quite enough already? It all seems a bit funny to me. I think it is a response to the suggestion, of a couple of years ago, to open up the annual Man Booker Prize to non-Commonwealth countries. The responses weren't totally negative but neither were they overwhelmingly positive. So it was quietly dropped in favour of the current prize.
The winners of the WA Premier's Awards for 2004 (an award that slipped under the Matilda radar) have now been announced. The winners:
Fiction
Sixty Lights, Gail Jones [along with the Premier's Award]
Poetry
Against Certain Capture, Miriam Wei Wei Lo
Non-Fiction
Conversations with the Constitution, Greg Craven
Redbill: From Pearls to Peace - The Life and Times of a Remarkable Lugger, Kate Lance
West Australian History Award
Behind the Play, Anthony Maker
Children's Books
A Home for Bilby, Joanne Crawford & Grace Fielding
Young Adults' Award
Fireshadow, Anthony Eaton
Script Award
Yandy, Jolly Read
Full details of the shortlists are also available. It is interesting to note that Jones and Winton have now gone head-to-head in two Premier's awards with the current score being one-all. Jones is also nominated for the Miles Franklin Award, unlike Winton.
As a follow-up to yesterday's post regarding the winners of the 2005 NSW Premier's Literary Awards "The Courier-Mail" interviews poetry, and book of the year winner, Sam Wagan Watson, who hails from Brisbane. "The Sydney Morning Herald" provides more of an overview of all the major winners, which is hardly surprising.
At a special presentation dinner held at the NSW Parliament House in Sydney last night, the NSW Premier Bob Carr presented the winners of the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. The winners:
The NSW Premier's Translation Prize ($15,000)
Christopher Andrews
UTS Award for New Writing - Fiction ($5,000)
Denise Young The Last Ride - HarperCollinsPublishers Pty Ltd
Gleebooks Prize for Critical Writing ($10,000)
Gillian Cowlishaw Blackfellas White Fellas and the Hidden Injuries of Race - Blackwell Publishing
Community Relations Commission Award ($15,000)
Tony Kevin A Certain Maritime Incident: The Sinking of SIEV X - Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Script Writing Award ($15,000)
Betty Churcher The Art of War, Film Australia
Play Award ($15,000)
Katherine Thomson Harbour, Sydney Theatre Company
Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature ($15,000)
Sherryl Clark Farm Kid - Penguin Group Australia
Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature ($15,000)
Steven Herrick By the River - Allen & Unwin
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($15,000)
Samuel Wagan Watson Smoke Encrypted Whispers - University of Queensland Press
Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction ($20,000)
John Hughes The Idea of Home: Autobiographical Essays - Giramondo Publishing Company
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($20,000)
Tim Winton The Turning - Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
In addition, the 2005 Book of the Year was presented to Samuel Wagan Watson, for his poetry collection Smoke Encrypted Whispers. You can read full href="http://www.arts.nsw.gov.au/awards/LiteraryAwards/2005%20awards/2005winners.htm">details of the award winners.
As previously mentioned in this litblog, Peter Robb's book, A Death in Brazil was longlisted for the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. The shortlist for the award has now been announced, but, unfortunately, Robb didn't make the final cut. The 6 shortlisted books do, however, look like they cover a wide array of subjects.
The $20,000 Nita B Kibble Award is for women writers of a published book of fiction or non-fiction classifiable as "life writing". Shortlisted for this year's award were: Plenty by Gay Bilson
Joe Cinque's Consolation by Helen Garner
The Broken Book by Susan Johnson
Yesterday, Gay Bilson was announced at the winner of the award for her second book. The judges described Plenty as "part memoir, part travel book, part essay [and]
takes Australian life writing into a whole new dimension." "The Sydney Morning Herald" carries a report of the award in today's edition, as does "The Australian". In a related ceremony at the State Library of NSW, the $2500 Dobbie Award for a first published work was awarded to Paulette Gittins for The Secret World of Annette Robinson.
Entries are now invited for the 2005 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Full details, including entry forms, can be found at the Awards' website. Entries close 3 June 2005.
The Awards "are open to all Australians with works first published (or performed) between 1 May 2004 and 30 April 2005." Categories are:
The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction
The prize for Young Adult Fiction
The CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry
The Louis Esson Prize for Drama
The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate
The Village Roadshow Prize for Screen Writing
The Prize for Science Writing (1 May 2003 to 30 April 2005)
The Grollo Ruzzene Foundation Prize for Writing about Italians in Australia (1 May 2003 to 30 April 2005)
The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer
Peter Robb's book A Death in Brazil has been included on the longlist for the BBC4 Samuel Johnson prize for Non-Fiction. Robb is also the author of Midnight in Sicily, M and Pig's Blood, all published by the small Sydney publishing house Duffy and Snellgrove. Last year's winner was Stasiland by Sydney-based author Anna Funder.
The shortlisted works for the 2005 Miles Franklin award have now been announced. The shortlist is:
Salt Rain by Sarah Armstrong
The Gift of Speed by Steven Carroll
Sixty Lights by Gail Jones
The White Earth by Andrew McGahan
The Submerged Cathedral by Charlotte Wood
The winner will be announced on June 23 at the State Library of NSW. "The Australian" has a report about yesterday's announcement of the shortlist. Matilda has previously looked at three of these novels (follow the links) and the others will follow over the next week or so. I'll also attempt to work my way through the titles, and comment on them as I go.
It's all go on the literary award front with the release today of the shortlists for the 2005 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. The winners will be announced by the Premier at a presentation dinner at Parliament House on 23 May 2005.
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($20,000)
Gail Jones Sixty Lights - Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Malcolm Knox A Private Man - Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Peter Kocan Fresh Fields - HarperCollinsPublishers Pty Ltd
Margo Lanagan Black Juice - Allen & Unwin
Célestine Hitiura Vaite Frangipani - The Text Publishing Company
Tim Winton The Turning - Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction ($20,000)
Robert Adamson Inside Out: An Autobiography - The Text Publishing Company
Robert Dessaix Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev - Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
Robyn Ferrell The Real Desire - Indra Publishing
Helen Garner Joe Cinque's Consolation - Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
Paul Ham Kokoda - HarperCollinsPublishers Pty Ltd
John Hughes The Idea of Home: Autobiographical Essays - Giramondo Publishing Company
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($15,000)
MTC Cronin
Lidija Cvetkovic War is Not the Season for Figs - University of Queensland Press
John Kinsella Doppler Effect - Salt Publishing
Dîpti Saravanamuttu The Colosseum Five - Islands Press
Samuel Wagan Watson Smoke Encrypted Whispers - University of Queensland Press
Alan Wearne The Lovemakers Book Two: Money and Nothing - ABC Books
Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature ($15,000)
Michael Gerard Bauer The Running Man Omnibus - Books/Scholastic Australia Pty Ltd
Phillip Gwynne Jetty Rats - Penguin Group Australia
Steven Herrick By the River - Allen & Unwin
Joanne Horniman Secret Scribbled Notebooks - Allen & Unwin
Jenny Pausacker Dancing on Knives - Thomas C Lothian Pty Ltd
Patricia Wrightson Prize ($15,000)
Isobelle Carmody Angel Fever - Thomas C Lothin Pty Ltd
Sherryl Clark Farm Kid - Penguin Group Australia
Gary Crew & Steven Woolman (illus.) Beneath the Surface - Hodder Headline Australia
Sonya Hartnett The Silver Donkey - Penguin Group Australia
Martine Murray Henrietta - Allen & Unwin
Ruth Starke Orphans of the Queen - Thomas C Lothian Pty Ltd
Community Relations Commission Award ($15,000)
Lidija Cvetkovic War is Not the Season for Figs - University of Queensland Press
John Hughes The Idea of Home: Autobiographical Essays - Giramondo Publishing Company
Tony Kevin A Certain Maritime Incident: The Sinking of SIEV X - Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Robert Manne with David Corlett Sending Them Home: Refugees and the New Politics of Indifference - Black Inc
Gleebooks Prize ($10,000)
Julia Baird Media Tarts: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians - Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Gillian Cowlishaw Blackfellas White Fellas and the Hidden Injuries of Race - Blackwell Publishing
Tony Kevin A Certain Maritime Incident: The Sinking of SIEV X - Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Mark McKenna This Country: A Reconciled Republic? - UNSW Press Ltd
Deborah Bird Rose Reports From a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation - UNSW Press Ltd
UTS Award for New Writing ($5,000)
No short list with this.
Play Award ($15,000)
Donna Abela Tales from the Arabian Nights, Kim Carpenter's Theatre of Image
Matt Cameron Hinterland, Melbourne Theatre Company
Melissa Reeves The Spook Company, B Belvoir St
Susan Rogers Night Letters, Playbox Theatre / Currency Press
Katherine Thomson Harbour, Sydney Theatre Company
Ian Wilding Torrez, Griffin Theatre Co / Currency Press
Script Writing Award ($15,000)
Betty Churcher The Art of War, Film Australia
Sharon Davis Two Weeks in Another Country - South Africa Ten Years After the End of Apartheid, ABC Radio National: Radio Eye
Tony Krawitz Jewboy, Porchlight Films Pty Ltd
Fiona Seres Fireflies: Episode 14, Southern Star
Nic Testoni & Jo Plomley Mr Patterns, Film Australia
The NSW Premier's Translation Prize ($15,000)
Christopher Andrews
Peter Boyle
Simon Patton
John Nieuwenhuizen
In what appears to be a first, at least for me, the Miles Franklin award people have released a "longlist" of 12 books vying for this year's award.
That list is:
Salt Rain by Sarah Armstrong
The Gift of Speed by Stephen Carroll
Backwaters by Robert Engwerda
The Ghost Writer by John Harwood
The Broken Book by Susan Johnson
Sixty Lights by Gail Jones
A Private Man by Malcolm Knox
The Philosopher's Doll by Amanda Lohrey
The White Earth by Andrew McGahan
I Have Kissed Your Lips by Gerard Windsor
The Submerged Cathedral by Charlotte Wood
The Last Ride by Denise Young
The shortlist (generally of 6 novels) will be announced on April 21, and the winner on June 23. Matilda has featured The Gift of Speed, The White Earth and Sixty Lights here previously, and once the shortlist is announced I'll ensure I feature all books with their web-based reviews.
Interestingly none of the authors listed has won the award before. Early tip for the winner is McGahan.
The shortlists for the Australian Children's Book of the Year Awards have now been announced. The full list, along with the official media release, can be found at the
href="http://www.cbc.org.au/short05.htm">award website. Winners will be
announced on Friday 19th August during Children's Book Week. The books nominated
by catgeory are:
Older Readers
The Running Man, Michael Gerard Bauer
Fireshadow, Anthony Eaton
By the River, Steven Herrick
Secret Scribbled Notebooks, Joanne Horniman
The Whole Business with Kiffo and the Pitbull, Barry Jonsberg
Black Juice, Margo Lanagan
Younger Readers
The Silver Donkey, Sonya Hartnett
Soraya the Storyteller, Rosanne Hawke
A Horse Called Elvis, John Heffernan
Tiff and the Trout, David Metzenthen
The Boy, the Bear, the Baron, the Bard, Gregory Rogers
Billy Mack's War, James Roy
Early
Childhood Dougal the Garbage Dump Bear, Matt Dray
Mr. Noah and the Cats, Vashti Farrer, illustrated by Neil Curtis
Where is the Green Sheep?, Mem Fox, illustrated by Judy Horacek
Tales from the Waterhole, Bob Graham
Mutt Dog!, Stephen Michael King
Seven More Sleeps, Margaret Wild, illustrated by Donna Rawlins
Picture Book
Belonging, Jeannie Baker
At the Beach: Postcards from Crabby Spit, Roland Harvey
Mutt Dog!, Stephen Michael King
Are We There Yet? A Journey Around Australia, Alison Lester
Refugees, David Miller
Lizzie Nonsense, Jan Ormerod
Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
Heritage & Places, Helen Chapman
Gogo Fish! The Story of the Western Australian State Fossil Emblem, John Long, illustrated by Jill Ruse and John Long
Life in a Rockpool, Greg Pyers
Amazing Australian Mammals, Barry Silkstone
To the Moon and Back: The Amazing Australians at the Forefront of Space Travel Plus Fantastic Moon Facts, Bryan Sullivan with Jackie French, illustrated by Gus Gordon
The Grief Book: Strategies for Young People, Elizabeth Vercoe with Kerry Abramowski
The winners of the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize have been announced, with Small Island by Andrea Levy taking out the Best Book Award, and Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie the Best First Book Award. Levy has previously won the Orange Prize and Whitbread Award for Small Island.
The publishers Allen and Unwin have announced that the 2005 Australian/Vogel Literary Award is now open. The Award is present to the author of the best unpublished manuscript submitted. Authors must be under the age of 35, that is born after 31 May 1970, and normally resident in Australia. The manuscript can be either a work of fiction, history or biography. Allen and Unwin promises to publish the winning work. The Award is currently worth $20,000 to the winner, along with any royalties coming from the book's publication.
Tim Winton has been nominated for a 2005 National Magazine Award in the Fiction category, for his story "Commission", which appeared in the September 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine. This appears to be the same story that appears in Winton's short story collection The Turning. Oddly enough I can't seem to find any details of when the awards are to be presented.
[Thanks to GalleyCat for the link.]
The shortlist for the 2005 International Impac Dublin Literary Award has been announced with 10 books nominated. It looks like a pretty well spread list, geographically-speaking, with books from the US, Canada, South Africa, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Australia being represented.
The Australian novel is The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard. This novel previously won the 2004 Miles Franklin Award and the 2003 US National Book Award.
The winner will be announced in Dublin on June 16th.
The winners for the 2003 Discover Great New Writers Awards have been announnced.
The Australian interest in these awards lay in the fiction category where The Hamilton Case by Michelle de Kretser and How the Light Gets In by M.J. Hyland were both nominated. Unfortunately for the Australians they came second and third (in the order listed here), losing out to Heaven Lake by John Dalton. A fine achievement by the two writers nevertheless, and, hopefully, it will expose their work to a wider range of readers, especially in the US market.
The winner of the 2005 National Biography Award has been announced as The Boy in the Green Suit by Robert Hillman, from Scribe Publications.
In the "Australian Book Review", Michael
McGirr said of this book: "One of the many attractions of this book is the wry affection with which the older man is able to look back upon his younger self. This is a tribute to both the writer and, in a sense, to Hillman as a human being ... The Boy in the Green Suit is an exquisitely painful book about one of the besetting conditions of modern life: restlessness ... There's an old adage that you can change the scenery but not yourself. Hillman tells that story with poignancy and warmth."
The shortlisted works for this year's award were:
Inside Out by Robert Adamson
Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin
The Boy in the Green Suit by Robert Hillman
Midnight Water by Gaylene Perry
Sparrow Garden by Peter Skrzynecki
In further news, the prize-money for the award was increased yesterday to $A20,000.
The shortlisted works for the 2005 National Biography Award have been announced.
Those works are:
Inside Out by Robert Adamson
Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin
The Boy in the Green Suit by Robert Hillman
Midnight Water by Gaylene Perry
Sparrow Garden by Peter Skrzynecki
This award was established in 1996 and run under the auspices of the State Library of New South Wales. Prize money was increased last year to $A15,000. The winner will be announced on Wednesday, March 2, 2005.
I've put off posting about this award but now everyone's talking about it.
Major difficulty: no Australian authors
Major surprise: Stanislaw Lem (an sf writer no less)
Major misunderstanding: what is this prize about? I reckon it arose from the fracas that ensued a few years back after it was announced that the country-based eligibility clause might be changed for the annual Booker Prize. So why did they come up with a bi-annual form of the Nobel? I have no idea.
Details of the regional winners for the 2005 Commonwealth Writers' Prize have been released. The Prize provides for winners in the two categories of Best Book and Best First Book, and regional winners are chosen from Africa, Caribbean & Canada, Eurasia, and SE Asia & South Pacific. Australian novels have done quite well with this prize in the past, with Best Book winners in 1991 David Malouf The Great World, 1993 Alex Miller The Ancestor Game, 1998 Peter Carey Jack Maggs, 1999 Murray Bail Eucalyptus, 2001 Peter Carey True History of the Kelly Gang, and 2002 Richard Flanagan Gould's Book of Fish.
This year Australian books have won the regional categories for Best Book for The White Earth by Andrew McGahan, and Best First Book for Home by Larissa Behrendt. Home was featured on this weblog recently as a "worthy book unnoticed". No longer unnoticed it would seem.
Winners will be announced on Wednesday 30th March.
Morag Fraser has been appointed to the judging panel for this year's Miles Franklin Award. Fraser is a former editor of "Eureka Street" and is an adjunct professor at La Trobe University. She joins the existing panel of Dagmar Schmidmaier, Eve Abbey, Robert Dixon, and Ian Hicks.
This follows on from the resignation at the end of last year of three judges on the previous panel, and a number of interesting discussions about the awards over the past few months. I think Fraser is an excellent choice and will help to restore the Award's reputation.
Two Australian novelists have been shortlisted for the 2004 Barnes & Noble Discover Greater New Writers Awards: The Hamilton Case by Michelle de Krester, and How the Light Gets In by M.J. Hyland.
The winners will be announced on March 2, 2005. First prize is $10,000, second $2,500 and third $1,000. US dollars of course. Good luck to them both.
The winners of the Aurealis Awards were announced on Friday night in Brisbane. The full list of nominees was posted here on 14th January. The Awards honor the best Australian fiction, at long and short lengths, in the sf/fantasy/horror/young adult/children's genres.
Best Novel:
Science Fiction - Less Than Human by Maxine McArthur
Fantasy - The Crooked Letter by Sean Williams
Horror - The Black Crusade by Richard Harland
Young Adult - Midnighters by Scott Westerfield Children - How to Live Forever by Colin Thompson
Best Short Story:
Science Fiction - "Come to Daddy" by Brendan Duffy
Fantasy - "Catabolic Magic" by Richard Harland, and "Weavers of Twilight" by Louise Katz
Horror - "The Last Days of Kali Yuga" by Paul Haines
Young Adult - "Singing my Sister Down" by Margo Lanagan
Children - "Beneath the Surface" by Gary Crew & Stephen Woolman
The Gold Aurealis Award was presented to Cat Sparks for her Agog series of anthologies.
For some years now I have been rather annoyed that the Miles Franklin Award is held in such little regard in this country. I've said in other places that I feel a bit ambiguous about awards in the arts - both sides of the argument hold sway at any one time: you can't expect to be able to pick the "best" novel out of a list of widely divergent subjects, and it tends to diminish the value of the work down to a "beauty contest"; it focuses the public's attention on books that are generally considered "worthy" and which might, in other circumstances, have been overlooked.
So let's, for the sake of this piece, acknowledge that the award is here to stay, and that it does have an important role to play in the literature of Australia. Why, then, does it only come to the public's attention when there is a fuss? And why so often?
At the end of 2004, "The Age" reported on the changes to the award judging structure being implemented by the Trustees. This "Judging Panel Charter" sought to define the roles of the judges, to limit their activities and place restrictions on their tenure and ability to elect a panel chair. Three of the judges - Mark Rubbo, David Marr and Kerryn Goldsworthy - resigned and have since been replaced. The award was in a bit of a sorry state during the latter part of the 1990s following the debacle of the choice of The Hand That Signed the Paper by Helen Demidenko/Darville in 1995. Slowly, confidence and trust in the award had begun to re-emerge, and now it seems like it has hit on hard times again.
There are a number of things about the award that I would like to see changed. Although I can see that having a fixed judging panel has had a beneficial effect of late, I would like to see some new faces included. From time to time. The Booker experience, of completely changing the panel each year, is too far the other way, but having judges
appointed for life (as in the original set-up), or unchanging for a considerable period doesn't appeal either. Maybe a combination of the two might work: a number of judges, say 4, which have extended appointments and from whom the panel chair is chosen on a rotating basis, and another 2 who are new appointments each year. That way you get "fresh new blood" each year with a level of continuity that the award seems to require. But what do I know? I'm only an interested observer.
Michael Williams, on the other hand, has more telling and informed things to say about the current mess. And maybe his final paragraph sums it all up:
A look at the winners over the 47 years of the award shows a considerable bias towards historical novels, novels with rural settings. Anglocentric, predominantly male. Is this an excessively narrow interpretation of the phases of Australian life? Arguably the Archibald Prize has a higher profile than the Miles. The spike in sales offered by its endorsement doesn't come within a bull's roar of that enjoyed by the Mann Booker, and almost 50 per cent of its winning titles are out of print. Somewhere along the line, this cultural icon has lost its way.
The Aurealis Awards Nominations (for best Sf/Fantasy/Horror/Young Adult/Children's Australian literature) have been released (okay, mid-December, but I'm trying to catch up) and the full list can be found at their website. The awards night is listed for January 22 in Brisbane, but, in the meantime, here are some reviews (where I can find any) of the novels under consideration:
SF Novels
Orbital Burn, KA Bedford
- "The Courier-Mail"
- SF Site
The Rebel, Jack Dann
- "The Age"
- Boomerang Books
Nylon Angel, Marianne de Pierres
- SF Revu
- Diverse Books
Less than Human, Maxine McArthur
- SF Site
- MEviews
Heirs of Earth, Sean Williams & Shane Dix
- SF Reviews
- TheForce.Net
Fantasy Novels
Brilliance of the Moon, Lian Hearn
- SF Site
- "The Age"
- Galaxy Bookshop
Snow, Fire, Sword, Sophie Masson
- Infinitas Bookshop
Giants of the Frost, Kim Wilkins
- Boomerang Books
- "The West Australian"
The Crooked Letter, Sean Williams
- TheForce.net
- Galaxy Bookshop
Horror Novels
The Black Crusade, Richard Harland
- Tabula Rasa
- Fantastic Queensland
Fire in the Shell, S Pennicott
- Galaxy Bookshop
Giants of the Frost, Kim Wilkins
- Boomerang Books
- "The West Australian"
Young Adult Novels
Midnighters 1: The Secret Hour, Scott Westerfield
- The Review Centre
Hot Nights, Cool Dragons, Matt Zurbo
- The Age
Undine, Penny Russon
- Boomerang Books
Flesh & Blood, Jackie French
- Galaxy Bookshop
Children's Novels
Snow, Fire, Sword, Sophie Masson
- Infinitas Bookshop
How To Live Forever, Colin Thompson
- Department of Education, Tasmania
The Pearl of Tiger Bay, Gabriel Wang
- January Magazine
Ranger's Apprentice, John Flanagan
- Gleebooks
Claire de Lune, Cassandra Golds
A bit of a problem here with the nomination of Giants of the Frost by Kim Wilkins in both the Fantasy and Horror categories. (I know that Sophie Masson is nominated in two different categories, but that seems okay to me: Children's and Fantasy seems quite compatible.) One or the other I would have thought was the best option.
It is pleasing to see so many novels listed. I remember back in the seventies and eighties when even one sf/fantasy/horror genre novel a year by an Australian author was considered good going. But the biggest question is: where are all the reviews? It seems that great scads of Australian literature is being ignored in this country. Especially in the children's section. Either that or the reviews aren't ending up on the web.
