Showing all posts about literary awards
The Small Press Network Book of the Year Award 2022 shortlist
7 October 2022
The Book of the Year Award 2022 shortlist was announced on Tuesday 4 October 2022, and features seven titles this year:
- No Document by Anwen Crawford
- Friends & Dark Shapes by Kavita Bedford
- Hometown Haunts by Poppy Nwosu
- Permafrost by SJ Norman
- Gravidity and Parity by Eleanor Jackson
- Theory of Colours by Bella Li
- Sexy Tales of Paleontology by Patrick Lenton
Also known as the the BOTYs, the award is an initiative of the Small Press Network, an organisation representing some two-hundred and fifty small and independent Australian publishers. The winner will be named on Friday 25 November 2022.
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Australian literature, literary awards
Annie Ernaux named Nobel Prize Literature laureate 2022
7 October 2022
French writer Annie Ernaux has been named the Nobel Prize Literature laureate for 2022. In selecting Ernaux, judges cited “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”
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Annie Ernaux, literary awards, literature
2022 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award shortlist
30 September 2022
The 2022 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award shortlist was announced on Tuesday 27 September 2022.
- Two Afternoons in the Kabul Stadium, by Tim Bonyhady
- Signs and Wonders, by Delia Falconer
- The Asparagus Wars, by Carol Major
- Mafioso, by Colin McLaren
- Mortals, by Rachel E. Menzies and Ross G. Menzies
- Here Goes Nothing, by Steve Toltz
Held in conjunction with Waverley Council, in Sydney’s east, the Nib Award, which was established in 2002, is the only Australian literary prize of its kind presented by a municipal council.
The winner of the prize, valued at A$20,000, will be named on Wednesday 16 November 2022.
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Australian literature, books, literary awards
Cutters End by Margaret Hickey wins 2022 Danger Prize
10 September 2022
Cutters End, by Victorian based author and playwright Margaret Hickey, was named winner of the 2022 Danger Prize for crime and justice writing with an Australian setting, at the Bad Sydney Crime Festival, yesterday evening.
Published by Penguin Books Australia in July 2022, Cutters End has a synopsis that’s sure to draw in fans of crime writing:
New Year’s Eve, 1989. Eighteen-year-old Ingrid Mathers is hitchhiking her way to Alice Springs. Bored, hungover and separated from her friend Joanne, she accepts a lift to the remote town of Cutters End.
July 2021. Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti is seconded to a recently reopened case, one in which he has a personal connection. Three decades ago, a burnt and broken body was discovered in scrub off the Stuart Highway, 300km south of Cutters End. Though ultimately ruled an accidental death, many people — including a high-profile celebrity — are convinced it was murder.
When Mark’s interviews with the witnesses in the old case files go nowhere, he has no choice but to make the long journey up the highway to Cutters End. And with the help of local Senior Constable Jagdeep Kaur, he soon learns that this death isn’t the only unsolved case that hangs over the town…
Incidentally, Cutters End was shortlisted in the Ned Kelly awards for crime writing, the winners of which I’ve also written about today.
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Australian literature, literary awards, Margaret Hickey
The 2022 Ned Kelly Australian crime writing award winners
10 September 2022
The winners of the 2022 Ned Kelly awards for crime writing were announced a couple of weeks ago, with a total of one hundred and thirty-five entries vying for the top spot in four award categories.
The Chase by Candice Fox won Best Crime Fiction, Banquet: The Untold Story of Adelaide’s Family Murders by Debi Marshall won Best True Crime, while Banjawarn by Josh Kemp won Best Debut Crime Fiction.
Going offshore, Toronto, Canada, based author Nita Prose took out the award for Best International Crime Fiction published in Australia, with The Maid.
Named for notorious nineteenth century Australian bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly, the awards have celebrated the best Australian crime writing since their inception in 1996.
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Australian literature, literary awards, Ned Kelly
Alice Pung named chair of judges for the 2023 Stella Prize
9 September 2022
Melbourne based author and lawyer Alice Pung was named chair of judges for the 2023 Stella Prize last month. The prize, which recognises the work of women and non-binary writers, is one of Australia’s most prestigious literary awards.
I recently read Pung’s 2021 novel One Hundred Days, which was shortlisted in both the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award, and the 2022 Australian Book Industry Awards. The story centres on sixteen year Kuruna, and her fraught — to put it mildly — relationship with her overbearing mother, which becomes all the more strained after Kuruna falls pregnant. Not an easy read, if I’m honest.
On the subject of the 2023 Stella Prize, entries are presently being accepted until Wednesday 12 October 2022.
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Alice Pung, Australian literature, books, literary awards
The Age Book of the Year prize 2022 winners announced
9 September 2022
In Moonland by Melbourne based Australian author Miles Allinson, which I’ve written about previously, has won the fiction prize in The Age Book of the Year prize 2022.
Meanwhile Leaping into Waterfalls by Sydney based writer and literary critic Bernadette Brennan — a biography of late Australian short story writer and novelist Gillian Mears — has taken out the award for non-fiction.
The winners of the prize, which was re-booted last year after a nine year hiatus, were announced on the opening night of the Melbourne Writers Festival.
The Dinny O’Hearn Poetry Prize was in the past awarded to works of — you guessed it — poetry, but this doesn’t appear to have been presented since 2012.
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Australian literature, Bernadette Brennan, books, literary awards, Miles Allinson
The Booker Prize 2022 shortlist
7 September 2022
The Booker Prize 2022 shortlist has been unveiled:
- Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
- Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
- Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
- The Trees by Percival Everett
- The Seven Moons of Maali Almeid by Shehan Karunatilaka
- Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
Featured above is the cover of Shehan Karunatilaka’s shortlisted title The Seven Moons of Maali Almeid. It would win the disassociated prize for best book cover on the Booker Prize shortlist, if there were such a thing.
The winner will be announced on Monday 17 October 2022.
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Booker Prize, books, literary awards
The winners of the 2022 Davitt Awards for crime writing
3 September 2022
Somehow I missed this earlier in the week, but the winners of the 2022 Davitt Awards for crime writing by Australian women, were announced last week, on Saturday 27 August.
Charlotte McConaghy’s environmental thriller, Once There Were Wolves (Penguin Random House Australia), won the award for Best Adult Novel. The Best Young Adult Novel prize went to Leanne Hall for The Gaps (Text Publishing) while the Best Children’s Novel Award was won by Nicki Greenberg (Melbourne, Victoria) for The Detective’s Guide to Ocean Travel (Affirm Press).
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Australian literature, awards, literary awards
Kylie Moore-Gilbert: the difficult return to a normal life
15 August 2022
Kylie Moore-Gilbert is an Australian academic who spent over two years in Iranian jails after being accused of spying, despite no evidence backing up the claims ever being published. Last week Moore-Gilbert wrote about being incarcerated, and the challenges of rebuilding her life, on returning to Melbourne in November 2020.
I am a 35-year-old childless divorcee with a criminal record. It was never meant to be this way, of course. A few years ago I was on track to achieving that comfortable middle-class existence of husband, dream job and a mortgage on a house in the suburbs. I was driven, I was hard-working, I was ambitious. After years of juggling full-time study with multiple part-time jobs I had finally gained an unsteady foothold on the precarious academic ladder. I was working on my first book, an adaptation of my PhD. I taught undergraduate and masters courses, and supervised research students. I used to think I had life more or less figured out, and myself too for that matter.
Incidentally, Moore-Gilbert’s memoir My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison, is among shortlisted titles for the 2022 The Age book of the year award. Winners will be announced when the Melbourne Writers Festival opens on Thursday 8 September 2022.
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