Jarad Bruinstroop wins unpublished poetry 2023 Val Vallis Award

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Jarad Bruinstroop wins unpublished poetry 2023 Val Vallis Award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Some late news to hand, Jarad Bruinstroop has been named winner of the 2023 Val Vallis Award for unpublished Australian poetry, with a poem titled Fragments on the Myth of Cy Twombly.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

Debut Writers Over 50, a literary award for mature authors

26 April 2023

Jenny Brown Associates, a literary agency based in Edinburgh, Scotland, announced the launch of a literary prize for emerging authors aged fifty and over, the Debut Writers Over 50 award, at this year’s London Book Fair. Speaking at the event, which was held last week, agency associate Lisa Highton said when it comes to starting out as a writer, youth should not be a prerequisite:

“The bestseller lists are full of debut novelists who are older, but the perception is that you have to be young when your first book comes out,” says literary agent Lisa Highton of Jenny Brown Associates. “But being a debut is not just about being a shiny, sparkly, young person. The reason we launched the award was to say to people over 50 yes, you too can be a shiny, sparkly, new writer – just older.”

This is a great initiative. I’m not sure how many literary awards cater for mature authors, but there sure seems to be plenty aimed at youth writers, and people aged under thirty-five. And that’s fine. Emerging younger writers need to be encouraged, since it’s difficult to become established in an industry dominated — usually — by, you know, older, big name authors, or those with several books to their name.

While the Debut Writers Over 50 award is for unpublished novelists residing in the United Kingdom, it’s good to see people commencing writing careers later in life being recognised. Submissions for the inaugural award close at the end of next month. A shortlist will be published on 27 July 2023, and the winner will be named on 26 August 2023, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

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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?

2023 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) shortlists

19 April 2023

Another day, another literary award shortlist announcement, this time it’s the 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) shortlists. All up, seventy-one books have been shortlisted across fourteen categories, including Audiobook of the Year, Biography Book of the Year, several Children’s and The Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, with five titles selected in two fiction categories:

Literary Fiction Book of the Year

All That’s Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien
The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane
Horse by Geraldine Brooks
Seeing Other People by Diana Reid
Limberlost by Robbie Arnott

General Fiction Book of the Year

Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor
The Tilt by Chris Hammer
Exiles by Jane Harper
Day’s End by Garry Disher
Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

The ABIAs are pretty close to Australia’s equivalent of the Oscars (or Logies), but for books rather than movies. Accordingly, winners will be named at a ceremony on the evening of Thursday 25 May 2023, in Sydney.

The 2023 International Booker Prize shortlist

18 April 2023

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, book cover.

The 2023 International Booker Prize shortlist was announced earlier this evening (east coast of Australia time) at the London Book Fair, and includes these six titles:

Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated from Catalan by Julia Sanches
The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, translated from French by Richard Philcox
Standing Heavy by GauZ’, translated from French by Frank Wynne
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel
Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim
Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey

The International Booker Prize is awarded annually for the finest single work of fiction from around the world which has been translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The winner will be named in London on Tuesday 23 May 2023.

The Age Book of the Year awards 2023 shortlists

14 April 2023

The Age Book of the Year awards 2023 shortlists were announced this afternoon. The awards are split into two sections, one for fiction, and the other for non-fiction.

The shortlisted titles for the fiction award are:

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott
Every Version of You by Grace Chan
A Country of Eternal Light by Paul Dalgarno
Funny Ethnics by Shirley Le
The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane
Faithless by Alice Nelson

The shortlisted titles for the non-fiction award are:

The All of It by Cadance Bell
Childhood by Shannon Burns
Suburban Noir by Peter Doyle
Raised by Wolves by Jess Ho
Wandering with Intent by Kim Mahood
Those Dashing McDonagh Sisters by Mandy Sayer

The winners of each category — who will be announced on Thursday 4 May 2023, at the opening of the Melbourne Writers Festival — will receive a prize of ten thousand dollars.

Iris, the new name of the Booker Prize trophy

31 March 2023

After a public vote to select a name for the Booker Prize trophy, convenors of the British literary award have revealed Iris to be the winning choice. Interestingly though, the winner of the vote was actually the name Bernie, being a nod to Bernardine Evaristo, the first black woman to win the Booker, with her 2019 novel Girl, Woman, Other.

Evaristo however felt late Irish British novelist Iris Murdoch should instead be honoured. The name Iris came in at second place in the poll:

‘I’m surprised and flattered that the name Bernie was nominated by readers in the Booker Prizes’ trophy competition and that it received the most votes in the public poll,’ Evaristo said. ‘But as the only living author on the list, I feel it would be more fitting for the honour to go to a writer who is no longer with us,’ she added.

Bad Art Mother by Edwina Preston rejected by 25 publishers

30 March 2023

Bad Art Mother by Edwina Preston, book cover

Melbourne based Australian musician and author Edwina Preston took her manuscript for Bad Art Mother, which was today shortlisted for the 2023 Stella Prize, to twenty-six book publishers before finding one who accepted it:

Thankfully her agent, Jenny Darling, was sending out the book. “I was a bit shielded in that sense, I don’t know if I would have sent it out 25 times off my own bat. But having that support behind me, I can’t tell you how important that was. It felt very lonely, and I felt very much like I was a bit deluded about myself and my work, but she believed in it.”

It’s kind of surprising, though maybe it isn’t, but Preston already had two books to her name, The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer, a novel published in 2012, and Not Just a Suburban Boy, a biography of late Australian artist Howard Arkley, published by Duffy & Snellgrove, in 2002.

Unpublished authors are not the only ones who struggle to get their work into print.

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