Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Nib Award 2024 longlist

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Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Nib Award 2024 longlist

12 August 2024

Seventeen books have been included on the recently announced Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Nib Award 2024 longlist. Also known as the “Nib”, the literary award celebrates excellence in Australian literary research, and as such works of any genre, including fiction, non-fiction, and autobiography, are eligible for inclusion.

A Very Secret Trade, by Cassandra Pybus
Alice™ The biggest untold story in the history of money, by Stuart Kells
Because I’m Not Myself, You See, by Ariane Beeston
Bennelong and Phillip: A History Unravelled, by Kate Fullagar
Book of Life, by Deborah Conway
Crimes of the Cross, by Anne Manne
Datsun Angel, by Anna Broinowski
Donald Horne, by Ryan Cropp
Edenglassie, by Melissa Lucashenko
Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths, by Matthew Lamb
Killing for Country, by David Marr
My Brilliant Sister, by Amy Brown
Reaching Through Time, by Shauna Bostock
Transgender Australia – A History since 1910, by Noah Riseman
Wear Next, by Clare Press
What the Trees See: A Wander Through Millennia of Natural History in Australia, by Dave Witty
Wifedom, by Anna Funder

A shortlist of six titles will be published on Tuesday 17 September 2024, with the winner being named on Wednesday 27 November 2024.

Nothing about Kissing by Kathryn Lomer wins 2024 Furphy literary award

12 August 2024

Hobart based Australian poet, and young adult writer, Kathryn Lomer, has been named winner of the 2024 Furphy literary award for short stories, with her work Nothing about Kissing (PDF).

Set in Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona), also in Hobart, Nothing about Kissing, is the story of an unnamed museum cleaner, who’s early morning shift gets off to a rather bad start.

I’m not really into short stories, they’re a hard act to master, but Lomer’s work is, literally, a winner. It’s short enough to read during a refreshment break, so do give it a look.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood included on Booker Prize longlist

6 August 2024

Sydney based Australian author Charlotte Wood has been included on the 2024 longlist for the Booker Prize, with her latest novel, Stone Yard Devotional. It is the first time a work by an Australian writer has featured on the Booker longlist since 2016.

I’m reading Stone Yard Devotional right now, and loving it. Some reviewers however have complained it plods, and is too introspective. The story is about a woman, non-religious, who retreats to a convent in outback Australia for a while to sort out her life. Her musing however, are interrupted by a number of unexpected happenings.

Wood’s 2019 novel The Weekend is another great read, in case you’re on the lookout for book recommendations. It was adapted for the stage, and has been optioned for a screen production.

Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright wins 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award

2 August 2024

As called/guessed by yours truly, Praiseworthy, the 2023 novel by Waanyi/Gulf of Carpentaria based Australian author Alexis Wright, has won the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Praiseworthy has cleaned up on the awards circuit since publication, also winning the other major Australian literary award, the Stellar Prize.

Wright also won the Miles Franklin in 2007, with Carpentaria. In winning this year, she joins an elite band of Australian writers to win the esteemed prize multiple times, including Thea Astley, Tim Winton, Patrick White, Michelle de Kretser, Kim Scott, and Thomas Keneally.

The 2024 Miles Franklin shortlist for Australian fiction

2 July 2024

The shortlist for the 2024 Miles Franklin literary award for works of Australian fiction, was announced earlier today. Of the ten novels named on the longlist in May, the following six titles have been included today:

Only Sound Remains, by Hossein Asgari
Wall, by Jen Craig
Anam, by André Dao
The Bell of the World, by Gregory Day
Hospital, by Sanya Rushdi
Praiseworthy, by Alexis Wright

Each author will receive five-thousand dollars for making the cut. Kate Evans, writing for ABC News, describes this year’s shortlist as one of the most culturally diverse, and notes that should a woman author win this year, that will be eight times in a row a woman has won.

My money would be on Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy, which has been doing well on the award’s circuit. The 2024 winner will be unveiled on Thursday 1 August 2024.

People may not read longer novels, but they do win literary awards

4 June 2024

Tangentially related to the last post. Longer novels might pose a challenge to certain readers, especially those who require apps to do the reading for them. But, longer titles are more likely to win literary awards:

Judgment and decision-making research suggests several causes of the apparent bias. One is the representativeness heuristic: longer novels resemble the tomes that constitute the foundations of the Western canon, and this similarity may subconsciously sway judges.

Winning a prize is obviously great for the author in question, but are they left wondering just how many people read their book, cover to cover? Especially those on the award judging panel…

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books, literary awards, literature

She is the Earth wins NSW Premiers Literary Awards book of year 2024

22 May 2024

She is the Earth, a work of verse, written by Yankunytjatjara (South Australia) poet Ali Cobby Eckermann, was named the NSW Premiers Literary Awards book of the year, on Monday 20 May 2024.

Award judges were unstinting in their praise of Eckermann’s writing:

She is the Earth is a stunning verse novel that takes the reader on a journey of love and grief, through land, sky and water, and all places in between. This surreal creation story contains many other stories and worlds within the whole. A story of breath and breadth, it is both other-worldly and inner-worldly, with the distinction between the two realms fuzzy and flowing across each other to astonishing effect.

2024 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) winners

16 May 2024

The 2024 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) were held last week, on Thursday 9 May. The ABIAs are considered the Australian book publishing industry’s night of nights. A book-ish version of the Oscars, if you will.

Award winners include Pip Williams, with her novel The Bookbinder of Jericho, in the General Fiction Book of the Year category. I’ve read the predecessor title, The Dictionary of Lost Words, a story with the publishing of the first edition of the Oxford Dictionary, as a backdrop.

Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life, by Anna Funder, won Biography Book of the Year, while Welcome to Sex, written by Melissa Kang and Yumi Stynes, which garnered some controversy last year, took out Book of the Year for Older Children (ages 13+).

The full list of winners can be seen here.

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Australian literature, literary awards

The 2024 Miles Franklin longlist for Australian novel writing

16 May 2024

Well this is exciting, the longlist for the 2024 Miles Franklin literary award for Australian novel writing, has been published. Not sure how I missed the official announcement, but I went searching for a date the longlist would be unveiled, and instead found the longlist itself:

Only Sound Remains, by Hossein Asgari
Wall, by Jen Craig
Strangers at the Port, by Lauren Aimee Curtis
Anam, by André Dao
The Bell of the World, by Gregory Day
Edenglassie, by Melissa Lucashenko
The Sitter, by Angela O’Keefe
Hospital, by Sanya Rushdi
Stone Yard Devotional, by Charlotte Wood
Praiseworthy, by Alexis Wright

Praiseworthy, which won the 2024 Stella Prize, and Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional, are notable inclusions. I loved Wood’s 2019 novel, The Weekend, and I guess a few other people also, as the film option was sold a couple of years ago, and a stage adaptation was also made.

I can’t — as yet — find a date the shortlist will be announced. Come to that, I couldn’t even find a date the longlist would be published, I just seemed to stumble upon it last night. I can’t figure out why they need to be so elusive about these things. The Miles Franklin is after all one of the highlights of the Australian literary calendar.

Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright, wins the 2024 Stella Prize

3 May 2024

Queensland/Waanyi author Alexis Wright, has been named winner of the 2024 Stella Prize for Australian literature, for works by women and non-binary writers, with Praiseworthy, a novel set in the north of Australia.

In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful.

Beejay Silcox, chair of the 2024 Stella judges panel, described Wright’s novel, which was published in 2023, as a great Australian novel, and mighty in every regard:

Praiseworthy is mighty in every conceivable way: mighty of scope, mighty of fury, mighty of craft, mighty of humour, mighty of language, mighty of heart.

Praiseworthy is not only a great Australian novel — perhaps the great Australian novel — it is also a great Waanyi novel. And it is written in the wild hope that, one day, all Australian readers might understand just what that means. I do not understand. Not yet. But I can feel history calling to me in these pages. Calling to all of us. Imagine if we listened.

Praiseworthy is an epic novel. Figuratively. And literally. With a page count of over seven-hundred, I’ve so far not been game enough to pick it up. I’m struggling to read novels with less than half as many pages. This is also Wright’s second Stella win, her 2017 novel Tracker, took out the 2018 prize.

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