2022 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award shortlist

Showing all posts about literary awards

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.

Cutters End by Margaret Hickey wins 2022 Danger Prize

10 September 2022

Cutters End by Margaret Hickey book cover

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Booker Prize 2022 shortlist

7 September 2022

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeid by Shehan Karunatilaka book cover

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.

RELATED CONTENT

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).

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.

The 2022 Booker Prize longlist

27 July 2022

The 2022 Booker Prize longlist was announced overnight, Australian time. Thirteen authors including Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet, and Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout, are among those included.

It includes the youngest and oldest authors ever to be nominated, as well as the shortest book, three debuts and two new publishers receiving their first ever nominations. Chair of the judges Neil MacGregor said ‘The list offers story, fable and parable, fantasy, mystery, meditation and thriller’.

The shortlist for the Booker Prize, which celebrates English language novels published in Ireland and the UK each year, will be unveiled on Tuesday 6 September 2022.

Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down wins the 2022 Miles Franklin literary award

20 July 2022

Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down bookcover

It’s a red letter day in Australian literature, with Bodies of Light, by Jennifer Down being named winner of the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Here’s the book trailer for Bodies of Light:

And here is an outline of Bodies of Light’s premise:

So by the grace of a photograph that had inexplicably gone viral, Tony had found me. Or: he’d found Maggie. I had no way of knowing whether he was nuts or not; whether he might go to the cops. Maybe that sounds paranoid, but I don’t think it’s so ridiculous. People have gone to prison for much lesser things than accusations of child-killing.A quiet, small-town existence. An unexpected Facebook message, jolting her back to the past. A history she’s reluctant to revisit: dark memories and unspoken trauma, warning knocks on bedroom walls, unfathomable loss. She became a new person a long time ago. What happens when buried stories are dragged into the light?

« older posts

newer posts »