2023 WA Premier’s Book Awards shortlists

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2023 WA Premier’s Book Awards shortlists

15 May 2023

Earlier today the 2023 WA Premier’s Book Awards shortlists were published.

The WA Premier’s Book Awards recognise the work of writers in Western Australia, in the same way the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, honour authors in those Australian states. It is refreshing to see some less familiar names featured today, as it can sometimes seem the same group of people crop up quite frequently — though for good reason — in various Australian literary awards.

The winners of the five WA Premier’s Book Awards categories will be announced in June 2023.

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Australian literature, literary awards

Poets Theodore Ell, Harry Reid, win 2022 Anne Elder Award

13 May 2023

Canberra based Australian translator and author Theodore Ell, and Melbourne based writer Harry Reid, have been named joint winners of the 2022 Anne Elder Award.

Established in 1977, the award is named for late Australian poet, and former Borovansky Ballet dancer, Anne Elder, who died in 1976, and is presented for the first published book by an Australian poet. Beginning in Sight, by Ell, and Leave Me Alone, by Reid, where published in 2022.

Ell was on a diplomatic posting in Lebanon in 2020, with his wife, at the time of the catastrophic Port of Beirut explosion. Although both survived the blast, the house they lived in was destroyed. Ell wrote an essay, Façades of Lebanon, about the incident, which won the 2021 Calibre Essay Prize.

Every Version of You by Grace Chan optioned for film

13 May 2023

Melbourne based Australian author Grace Chan’s debut novel Every Version of You, has been optioned for film. Cognito Entertainment, a new Los Angeles based film production company, whose goal is to bring weird science to life through story, will oversee the book to screen adaptation:

Neuroscientist and Stanford professor Dr. David Eagleman has teamed up with producers Matt Tauber and Adam Fratto to launch Cognito Entertainment, an independent production company centered around science programming and films. The Los Angeles and Palo Alto-based company has already begun working on scripted television series, documentaries and literary adaptation.

I’m part way through reading Every Version of You as I write this, and I can’t say I’m surprised. While great news for Chan, this is also a positive development for Australian writers of science fiction and speculative fiction, who often struggle to find someone to publish their work.

Lisa Berryman, Tim Winton, inducted to ABIA Hall of Fame

10 May 2023

Australian authors Lisa Berryman and Tim Winton were yesterday admitted to the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) Hall of Fame, for their decades of contribution to Australian literature. Berryman was recognised with the Pixie O’Harris Award for her work as a publisher of children’s and young adult titles, while Winton received the Lloyd O’Neil Award.

Vale Gabrielle Carey, co-author of 1979 novel Puberty Blues

6 May 2023

Australian author Gabrielle Carey, who co-wrote the controversial though iconic novel Puberty Blues, with Kathy Lette, died this week in Sydney.

Set in the southern suburbs of Sydney, Puberty Blues polarised readers with its no holds barred depictions of the antics, and sexuality, of Australian adolescents. Although published in 1979, Carey and Lette began writing the novel some years earlier as teenagers. The book spawned a film adaptation in 1981, and a two-series television run in 2012.

Carey went on to write a number of other books, both fiction and non-fiction, and also worked as a freelance journalist and university lecturer.

Limberlost, Wandering With Intent, win 2023 Age Book of Year

4 May 2023

The Age Book of the Year Awards 2023 winners were announced this evening, at the opening of the 2023 Melbourne Writers Festival. The awards, presented annually, are made in two categories for Australian writing: fiction and non-fiction.

Limberlost, by Tasmanian author Robbie Arnott was named winner in the fiction category, while Wandering With Intent, by Wamboin, New South Wales based author and artist, Kim Mahood triumphed in the non-fiction category.

Arnott’s win today is his second in the awards. He also won in 2021, the year the prize returned after a nine year absence, with his 2020 novel The Rain Herron.

Jarad Bruinstroop wins unpublished poetry 2023 Val Vallis Award

3 May 2023

Some late news to hand, Jarad Bruinstroop has been named winner of the 2023 Val Vallis Award for unpublished Australian poetry, with a poem titled Fragments on the Myth of Cy Twombly.

Bruinstroop’s debut collection of poetry, Reliefs, is due to be published by the University of Queensland Press later this year.

The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt wins 2023 Stella Prize

27 April 2023

The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt, book cover

It’s been a good couple of years for poetry at the Stella Prize. And for the University of Queensland Press (UQP). This evening Queensland born Australian author Sarah Holland-Batt was named winner of the 2023 award, with her collection of poetry, The Jaguar, published by UQP, in May 2022. Holland-Batt follows Evelyn Araluen, winner of the 2022 Stella with her collection of poetry, Dropbear, also published by UQP.

The Jaguar is Holland-Batt’s third book, and was written in the wake of her father being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and his later death in 2020:

With electrifying boldness, Sarah Holland-Batt confronts what it means to be mortal in an astonishing and deeply humane portrait of a father’s Parkinson’s Disease, and a daughter forged by grief. Opening and closing with startling elegies set in the charged moments before and after a death, and fearlessly probing the body’s animal endurance, appetites and metamorphoses, The Jaguar is marked by Holland-Batt’s lyric intensity and linguistic mastery, along with a stark new clarity of voice.

Alice Pung, chair of this year’s judging panel, describes Holland-Batt’s prose as “unexpected and unforgettable“:

In The Jaguar, Sarah Holland-Batt writes about death as tenderly as we’ve ever read about birth. She focuses on the pedestrian details of hospitals and aged care facilities, enabling us to see these institutions as distinct universes teeming with life and love. Her imagery is unexpected and unforgettable, and often blended with humour. This is a book that cuts through to the core of what it means to descend into frailty, old age, and death. It unflinchingly observes the complex emotions of caring for loved ones, contending with our own mortality and above all – continuing to live.

The Stella Prize is not the only accolade The Jaguar has garnered. It was named The Australian’s, 2022 Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize, which is part of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.

Update: see Holland-Batt’s Stella Prize acceptance speech here.

The 2023 BookPeople Book of Year shortlist

21 April 2023

It’s been a busy several days for literary awards. Since last Friday, shortlists for The Age Book of the Year, the International Booker Prize, the Australian Book Industry Awards, and the Australian Book Design Awards, for book cover design, have been published.

And to cap off the week, the 2023 BookPeople Book of Year shortlist was announced earlier today. Six books have been selected in three categories: kids, adult non-fiction, and adult fiction. The following six titles are on the adult fiction shortlist:

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
Horse by Geraldine Brooks
All That’s Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien
Willowman by Inga Simpson
Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

The BookPeople Book of Year awards honour new Australian book releases, which have been selected by Australian Booksellers Association members as their favourite hand-sells of the last year. The winners in each category will be named on Sunday 19 June 2023.

Nice to see Willowman on the fiction list, I think everyone else has had at least one listing previously. Oh, and another accolade for Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow. Incredible, hey?

The rise and rise of Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au

19 April 2023

Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, book cover

Cold Enough for Snow (Giramondo Publishing), by Melbourne based Australian author Jessica Au, is a heart-warming story of a young woman and her mother, who holiday in Japan together.

A young woman has arranged a holiday with her mother in Japan. They travel by train, visit galleries and churches chosen for their art and architecture, eat together in small cafes and restaurants and walk along the canals at night, on guard against the autumn rain and the prospect of snow. All the while, they talk, or seem to talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes and objects; about the mother’s family in Hong Kong, and the daughter’s own formative experiences. But uncertainties abound. How much is spoken between them, how much is thought but unspoken?

But Au’s debut novel has had run of success that authors — both new and established — could only dream of. Since being published in February 2022, Cold Enough for Snow has won a slew of awards. Gongs so far include the 2020 Novel Prize, of which it was the inaugural recipient, and the 2022 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction.

Au’s book also cleaned up at the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, collecting both the Fiction award, and the Victorian Prize for Literature, valued together at A$125,000. The novel has also been shortlisted in the fiction categories of the 2022 Queensland Literary Awards, and the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Cold Enough for Snow was also shortlisted for the fiction award in the 2022 Age Book of the Year.

Literary award longlist listings meanwhile include the 2022 Indie Book Awards, 2023 Dublin Literary Award, and the 2023 BookPeople Nielsen award. These are incredible achievements, and are all the more remarkable given the page count barely exceeds one hundred. Compelling stories do not need to be of epic proportions.

But Cold Enough for Snow’s winning streak may not be over just yet. Today, the title was included in the shortlist of the Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year category in the 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs). The winners of the ABIAs will be announced in late May. We can only be left wondering: what’s next for Au’s debut work of fiction?

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