Three Dresses by Wanda Gibson, wins 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award

Showing all posts tagged: Australian literature

Three Dresses by Wanda Gibson, wins 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award

20 March 2025

Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, based Nukgal Wurra woman Wanda Gibson, has won the 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, with her book, Three Dresses. Gibson’s win is the first time a children’s title has won the award. In addition, Three Dresses won the Children’s Literature category.

Winners in other categories included Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane, in Fiction, and Black Witness by Amy McQuire, in Indigenous Writing, which is also on the longlist of this year’s Stella Prize.

Gawimarra: Gathering by Jeanine Leane, won the Poetry award, anything can happen by Susan Hampton, collected the Non-Fiction prize, while I Made This Just for You by Chris Ames, won the Unpublished Manuscript award.

Moonboy, a time traveller fears she has changed history, and other books

19 March 2025

In Moonboy by Anna Ciddor, Letty can travel back in time from the room in her present day house, to the same room in 1969, when it is occupied by a boy her age. Letty is able to relive the excitement of the Apollo 11 launch, but fears her jaunts through time might be changing history. Don’t mess with the space-time continuum now. Moonboy might be a kids’ book, but the plot is just my thing.

First Name, Second Name, by Steve MinOn, isn’t a time travel story, nor horror, as a dead man walks back through his family’s turbulent history to claim his identity. Just in time for the imminent Federal election: How Australian Democracy Works, edited by Australian journalist Amanda Dunn. Yes, we need our democracy more than ever, as the byline reminds us.

A troubled young woman takes her mother and grandmother to Peru on a trek to Machu Picchu, thinking the walk will do them all good. But is it a good idea? Or will the amalgam of family secrets that come to light scuttle her plan? That’s Best, First and Last, by Amy Matthews.

Gusty Girls explores the life of late Australian poet Dorothy Porter, written by her younger sister, Josie McSkimming. Careless People, by former Facebook director of global public policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams, is the book Meta doesn’t want you to read. If that doesn’t scream buy me, what does?

The Sydney Writers’ Festival 2025 program has been published

19 March 2025

This year’s festival has events running from Sunday 18 May through to Wednesday 11 June 2025, though I understand the main event goes from Monday 19 May to Sunday 25 May. There’s too many highlights to list separately, but a few events caught my eye.

The evening of Monday 19 May sees the naming of the winners of the NSW Literary Awards, previously the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards — I can’t find an official announcement of the name change — so NSW Literary Awards it is.

Charlotte Wood, author of Stone Yard Devotional speaks on Tuesday 20 May. Toby Walsh, Chief Scientist of UNSW AI will discuss the six ideas you need to understand AI, on Thursday 22 May.

Friday 23 May is busy. Marcel Dirsus’ talks about the rise and fall of tyrants. Topical, or what. Helen Garner discusses her popular sports-themed memoir The Season. And Shankari Chandran, winner of the 2023 Miles Franklin Award, speaks about the power of literature in sorting fact from fiction in the face of authoritarianism.

Saturday 24 May is a big day. Robbie Arnott (Instagram link) talks about his latest novel Dusk. Michelle Brasier, Virginia Gay, and Chloe Elisabeth Wilson, discuss building writing communities. And the winners of Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award, will speak to Melanie Kembrey.

Sunday 25 May is another big one. Charlotte Wood, and Irish author Colm Tóibín, also immediate past Laureate for Irish Fiction, discuss Irish literature versus Australian writing. In case you don’t know, Irish literature is smashing the ball out of the park. Annabel Crabb is joined by Jessie Tu (Instagram link), to talk about her latest novel, The Honeyeater.

On Sunday evening, Anna Funder will deliver the festival’s closing address. As I say, this is but a small sample of what’s happening, so check out the program for the full story.

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Australian literature, events, Sydney

The Australian Book Design Awards 2025 longlist

13 March 2025

This is where we get the once-a-year chance to judge a book by its cover… the longlist for the 2025 Australian Book Design Awards (ABDA) was published last week (PDF).

Among numerous inclusions (this is the longlist after all) are covers for Tim Winton’s latest novel, Juice, designed by Adam Laszczuk, and Lucinda Froomes Price’s book All I Ever Wanted Was To Be Hot, designed by Katherine Zhang, of Sydney based Australian design house Evi-O.Studio.

The winners will be announced on Friday 23 May 2025.

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Australian literature, books, design

Signs of Damage, a new novel by Australian author Diana Reid

5 March 2025

Signs of Damage is the third novel from London based Australian author Diana Reid.

The Kelly family’s idyllic holiday in the south of France is disturbed when Cass, a thirteen-year-old girl, goes missing. She’s discovered several hours later with no visible signs of injury. Everyone present dismisses the incident as a close brush with tragedy.

Sixteen years later, at a funeral for a member of the Kelly family, Cass collapses. The present and the past start to collide as buried secrets come to light and old doubts resurface. What really happened to Cass in the south of France? And what’s wrong with her now?

I’ve read Reid’s 2021 debut Love & Virtue and have her second, novel Seeing Other People, published in 2022, on my (lengthy) TBR list. Signs of Damage will be published later this month.

The 2025 Stella Prize literary award longlist

5 March 2025

Literary award season kicks off in Australia this year, with the announcement of the 2025 Stella Prize literary award longlist yesterday, at Adelaide Writers’ Week, in South Australia.

A Language of Limbs, by Dylin Hardcastle
Always Will Be, by Mykaela Saunders
Black Convicts, by Santilla Chingaipe
Black Witness, by Amy McQuire
Cactus Pear For My Beloved, by Samah Sabawi
Translations, by Jumaana Abdu
Naag Mountain, by Manisha Anjali
Peripathetic, by Cher Tan
Rapture, by Emily Maguire
The Burrow, by Melanie Cheng
Theory & Practice, by Michelle de Kretser
The Thinning, by Inga Simpson

The Stella Prize honours Australian women’s writing annually. The shortlist will be published on Tuesday 8 April 2025, with the winner being named on Friday 23 May 2025.

Somebody Down There Likes Me, a new novel by Robert Lukins

19 February 2025

Melbourne based Australian author Robert Lukins returns with a new novel, Somebody Down There Likes Me, a follow up to his 2022 book, Loveland.

As with Loveland and his 2018 debut, The Everlasting Sunday, Somebody Down There Likes Me, is set outside Australia, this time in a town called Belle Haven, in Connecticut, in the United States, during the final years of the twentieth-century:

Against the backdrop of the last decadent gasps of the twentieth century, the Gulch family have led a charmed existence in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Belle Haven, Connecticut. Now, the empire they have built is on the edge of collapse, and as the decades of fraud and criminality that lie beneath the family’s incredible wealth is exposed, the Gulch children are summoned.

I read Loveland a couple of years ago, and look forward to Somebody Down There Likes Me. I must also get hold of The Everlasting Sunday as well.

The Ledge, a thriller by Australian author Christian White

12 February 2025

A disturbing development in a twenty-five year old missing persons case sees a group of old school friends reluctantly reunite. All have reason to be fearful of the re-opened police investigation, and all are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure they are not incriminated. It’s not easy to be sure who to trust, or exactly who knows what about that tragic day many years earlier in 1999.

The Ledge wouldn’t be a Christian White novel if it didn’t feature a twist that leaves you breathless, and wondering whether you’ve been paying attention. White’s fourth novel will not let you down.

I read The Ledge in three days, a sprint compared to my usual glacial pace, often reading until two or three in the morning. Calling this a page-turner is an understatement.

I also suggest you read White’s earlier novels, The Nowhere Child, his debut, and The Wife and the Widow, his second novel, which in trademark style, are also set across dual timelines. I’m yet to read his third novel, Wild Places, published in 2022. I’ll need to catch up on some sleep before then.

The Shortlist for the Australian 2025 Indie Book Awards

20 January 2025

The Australian Indie Book Awards span six categories: fiction, non-fiction, debut fiction, illustrated non-fiction, children’s, and young adult, and last week the shortlist for the 2025 awards was published. My main interest is fiction, where Dusk by Robbie Arnott, and The Ledge by Christian White, are among contenders in that category.

I’m yet to read Dusk, but finished The Ledge in four days flat. Record time, for me, in recent years. White’s thriller/crime stories, with twists that leave you breathless, are verifiable page turners. That is was holidays contributed to the fast read. On that basis, The Ledge is my favourite in fiction. The winners will be announced on Monday 24 March 2025.

That might give me time to read Dusk, plus Cherrywood by Jock Serong, and Juice by Tim Winton, the other titles shortlisted in the fiction category, beforehand.

Melissa Lucashenko wins 2024 Mark and Evette Moran Nib award

28 November 2024

Goorie/South East Australian author Melissa Lucashenko has won the 2024 Mark and Evette Moran Nib literary award, with her 2023 novel Edenglassie. A work of historical fiction, Edenglassie, which links the past with the present, also won this year’s ARA Historical Novel Prize, Indie Book Awards, and the fiction category of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice. Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Granny Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives.

Speaking after being presented the Nib, at a ceremony at Sydney’s Bondi Pavilion last night, Lucashenko said she intended to give away much of the forty-thousand dollar prize money.

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