Going blue for Miles Franklin week 2022

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Going blue for Miles Franklin week 2022

18 July 2022

The winner of the 2022 Miles Franklin literary prize will be announced on Wednesday 20 July 2022, and to mark the momentous occasion I’ve remixed the disassociated logo with the Miles Franklin hues of blue for this week.

I’m a big fan of literary awards, as they’re great places to find quality reading suggestions. Of the six titles on the 2021 shortlist, I’ve so far read The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey, the 2021 winner, plus Lucky’s by Andrew Pippos, The Inland Sea by Madeleine Watts, and The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott.

To date I’ve not been disappointed. But for more recent reading ideas, check out the 2022 Miles Franklin longlist, announced in May, and the shortlist from last month.

The 2022 Ned Kelly Awards shortlists

6 July 2022

The 2022 Ned Kelly Awards shortlists have been announced by the Australian Crime Writers Association. This year the work of nineteen writers has been shortlisted in four categories.

Best debut crime fiction

Sweet Jimmy, by Bryan Brown
Shadow Over Edmund Street, by Suzanne Frankham
Cutters End, by Margaret Hickey
Banjawarn, by Josh Kemp

Best true crime

The Mother Wound, by Amani Haydar
Larrimah, by Caroline Graham and Kylie Stevenson
Banquet: The untold story of Adelaide’s family murders, by Debi Marshall
A Witness of Fact, by Drew Rooke

Best international crime fiction

Case Study, by Graeme Macrae Burnet
The Heron’s Cry, by Ann Cleeves
The Maid, by Nita Prose
Cry Wolf, by Hans Rosenfeldt

Best crime fiction

The Enemy Within, by Tim Ayliffe
The Others, by Mark Brandi
You Had it Coming, by B M Carroll
The Chase, by Candice Fox
Kill Your Brother, by Jack Heath
The Family Doctor, by Debra Oswald
The Deep, by Kyle Perry

The winners will be announced in early August 2022.

Books to read by Indigenous authors suggested by Anita Heiss

6 July 2022

We’re in the middle of National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee week, or NAIDOC week, in Australia, which is a celebration of the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

It’s also a good opportunity to focus on the literature of Indigenous and First Nation people, and Twenty reasons you should read blak, by author and activist Anita Heiss, is an awesome starting point. The suggestions were made during a speech Heiss gave at the Blak and Bright Festival in 2016.

2022 Environment Award for Children’s Literature shortlist

4 July 2022

A total of twenty-one books, in four categories, including the inaugural Karijia Award, have been named on the 2022 Environment Award for Children’s Literature shortlist, a literary award which is hosted by the Wilderness Society.

Notable among those included on the shortlist is retired Australian Football League player Adam Goodes, whose book, Somebody’s Land: Welcome to Our Country, co-written with Ellie Laing, has been named on the Karijia Award shortlist, a prize which recognises the best in First Nations storytelling for children.

Picture Fiction:

The Accidental Penguin Hotel, by Andrew Kelly, illustrated by Dean Jones
9 things to remember (and one to forget), written and illustrated by Alison Binks
Sharing, by Aunty Fay Muir and Sue Lawson, illustrated by Leanne Mulgo Watson
One Potoroo: A Story of Survival, by Penny Jaye, illustrated by Alicia Rogerson
The River, by Sally Morgan, illustrated by Johnny Warrkatja Malibirr
Saving Seal. The Plastic Predicament, by Diane Jackson Hill, illustrated by Craig Smith

Non-fiction:

The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature, by Sami Bayly
The Australian Climate Change Book, by Polly Marsden, illustrated by Chris Nixon
The Way of the Weedy Seadragon, by Anne Morgan, illustrated by Lois Bury
The Gentle Genius of Trees, written and illustrated by Philip Bunting

Fiction:

Fish Kid and the Turtle Torpedo, written and illustrated by Kylie Howarth
Bailey Finch Takes a Stand, by Ingrid Laguna
The Good Times of Pelican Rise: Save the Joeys, by Samone Amba

The Karijia Award for Children’s Literature:

Sea Country, by Aunty Patsy Cameron, illustrated by Lisa Kennedy
Sharing, by Aunty Fay Muir and Sue Lawson, illustrated by Leanne Mulgo Watson
Warna-Manda Baby Earth Walk, by Susan Betts, illustrated by Mandy Foot and Susan Betts
Wiradjuri Country, by Larry Brandy
Somebody’s Land: Welcome to Our Country, by Adam Goodes and Ellie Laing, illustrated by David Hardy
The Story Doctors, by Boori Monty Pryor, illustrated by Rita Sinclair
The River, by Sally Morgan, illustrated by Johnny Warrkatja Malibirr
Walking in Gagudju Country: Exploring the Monsoon Forest, by Diane Lucas and Ben Tyler, illustrated by Emma Long

The winners will announced during Nature Book Week, which takes place from Monday 5 September 2022 through to Sunday 11 September.

The Eulogy, new autofiction by Jackie Bailey

4 July 2022

The Eulogy, by Jackie Bailey, book cover

The Eulogy, published by Hardie Grant in June 2022, is the debut autofiction novel of Australian author Jackie Bailey, and if the description autofiction is indicative, then the story is based, in part at least, on Bailey’s own life:

It’s winter in Logan, south-east Queensland, and still warm enough to sleep in a car at night if you have nowhere else to go. But Kathy can’t sleep. Her husband is on her blocked caller list and she’s running from a kidnapping charge, a Tupperware container of 300 sleeping pills in her glovebox. She has driven from Sydney to plan a funeral with her five surviving siblings (most of whom she hardly speaks to) because their sister Annie is finally, blessedly, inconceivably dead from the brain tumour she was diagnosed with twenty-five years ago, the year everything changed. Kathy wonders – she has always wondered – did Annie get sick to protect her? And if so, from what?

Autofiction, in case you’re wondering — as I was — is term first used by late French author Serge Doubrovsky, when he published his novel Fils in 1977, although he by no means pioneered the genre. The autofiction like blending of autobiography with fiction, can be found in the writing of Sappho, a Greek poet who died in around 570 BCE.

Autofiction combines two mutually inconsistent narrative forms, namely autobiography and fiction. An author may decide to recount their life in the third person, to modify significant details and characters, using fictive subplots and imagined scenarios with real life characters in the service of a search for self.

Some titles by James Joyce, and Jack Kerouac, who both worked and died well before 1977, can be seen as examples of autofiction, while On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, written in 2019 by Ocean Vuong, and Outline, from 2015, by Rachel Cusk, are more recent instances.

A history of Australian literary scandals

29 June 2022

The recent John Hughes plagiarism fracas is but one of numerous scandals in Australian literature, some more audacious than others, writes Melbourne based Australian journalist and author Thuy On.

In 1990, Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan was released, purportedly about the journey of a middle-aged, white American woman and her interactions with a group of Indigenous peoples in Australia. Morgan stated the book was inspired by actual experience, however research in central and Western Australia failed to uncover any evidence of her presence in the area or the existence of the tribe in question.

RELATED CONTENT

Australian literature, writing

2022 ASA/Varuna Ray Koppe Young Writers Residency

29 June 2022

Applications for the 2022 ASA/Varuna Ray Koppe Young Writers Residency are open until Friday 29 July 2022. The residency was established in memory of the late Ray Koppe, by her family. Koppe worked for many years assisting with the administration of the Australian Society of Authors.

Each year, the Australian Society of Authors awards a two-week residential fellowship to a writer under the age of 35 who is as yet unpublished.

Danielle Binks and Hannah Bent, are among past winners.

The 2022 Miles Franklin shortlist

23 June 2022

The 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist was unveiled this evening, with the following five novels making the cut:

The Other Half of You, by Michael Mohammed Ahmad
Scary Monsters, by Michelle de Kretser
Bodies of Light, by Jennifer Down
One Hundred Days, by Alice Pung
Grimmish, by Michael Winkler

Awesome to see Grimmish by Michael Winkler, on the list, now the first self-published novel to reach the Miles Franklin shortlist.

The winner will be named on Wednesday 20 July 2022.

Megan Williams wins 2022 Text Prize for unpublished manuscripts

23 June 2022

Brisbane based former employment lawyer Megan Williams has been named winner of the 2022 Text Prize, with her debut unpublished novel manuscript Let’s Never Speak of this Again.

Having won the prize for young adult and children’s fiction though, Let’s Never Speak of this Again will not remain unpublished for too much longer.

Grimmish Michael Winkler’s self-published Miles Franklin entry

22 June 2022

Grimmish by Michael Winkler — along with the other books on this year’s Miles Franklin longlist — has somewhat found itself in the shadows as a consequence of the plagiarism controversy surrounding John Hughes’ novel The Dogs, which has since been removed from the longlist.

This could have been unfortunate as the 2021 title by the Melbourne based Australian author has an historic claim to fame. Grimmish is the first ever self-published novel to be included on the longlist of the long running Australian literary prize.

Variously described as “exploded nonfiction“, and an “experimental historical novel“, Grimmish recounts the story of Italian American boxer Joe Grim, and his tour of Australia in 1908 and 1909. Grim who fought in over one-hundred-and-fifty bouts, only prevailed on twenty-four occasions. That didn’t prevent him from developing a reputation for his showmanship and extraordinary physical resilience, and earning the moniker of the “the human punching bag” in the process.

But Grim isn’t the only player in this story with tenacity. Like many authors, Winkler struggled to find a publisher interested in looking at his manuscript. But that was only the beginning. He was also subjected to numerous taunts and sneers, being told Grimmish, with its unconventional format, was “wearisome”, and “repellent.” Publishing houses, it seemed, did not want to take a punt on a book they felt certain would not sell.

At that point Winkler decided to self-publish. But self-publishing is not for the faint-hearted. In addition to writing a novel, an author is required to take on all the functions of a publishing house, editing, printing, marketing, and distribution, among them. An abundance of resolve and stamina — matching that, I dare say, of a champion boxer — is required.

The Miles Franklin shortlist will be announced tomorrow, Thursday 23 June 2022, and Grimmish has more than a few fans gunning for its inclusion. Rave reviews aside — the novel has garnered a respectable 4.25 out of five rating on Goodreads, Grimmish is almost deserving of a shortlist place purely on account of Winkler’s drive and determination in getting his book published.

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