The 2023 Miles Franklin Australian literary award shortlist

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The 2023 Miles Franklin Australian literary award shortlist

20 June 2023

Book cover of The Lovers, by Yumna Kassab, named on the 2023 Miles Franklin shortlist.

The shortlist of the 2023 Miles Franklin literary award was announced this morning. The following six books have advanced to the next stage of the prestigious Australian literary award:

Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
Hopeless Kingdom by Kgshak Akec
Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor
Limberlost by Robbie Arnott
The Lovers by Yumna Kassab

More good news for Jessica Au and Robbie Arnott who continue to not only win literary awards, but be nominated for them. And good to see some not so often seen writers make the shortlist. In a statement, the judges said the shortlisted titles all represent fresh and bold fiction writing:

The 2023 Miles shortlist celebrates six works that delve deeply into archives and memory, play confidently with style and structure and strike new grounds in language and form. From deeply immersive tales to polished jewels of craft, from lyrical mappings of land to convention-breaking chronicles, this is novel-writing at its freshest and boldest.

The winner will be named on Tuesday 25 July 2023.

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott wins 2023 BookPeople fiction award

19 June 2023

The winners of the 2023 BookPeople Awards were announced last night, Sunday 18 June, at a ceremony at the Adelaide Convention Centre, in South Australia.

The awards recognise both the efforts of booksellers across Australia, and Australian writers of adult fiction, adult non-fiction, and children’s books. Winners are selected every year by members of the Australian Booksellers Association.

Craig Silvey won Children’s Book of the Year with Runt, Niki Savva won Non-Fiction Book of the Year with Bulldozed, while Robbie Arnott continued on his winning way, taking out the Fiction Book of the Year, with his 2022 novel Limberlost.

I’m yet to read Limberlost, but rest assured, it’s there TBR.

Lauren Crozier wins unpublished manuscript 2023 Text Prize

19 June 2023

Gayamaygal/Manly, Sydney, based Australian writer and editor Lauren Crozier has been named winner of the 2023 Text Prize, with her manuscript titled The Best Witch in Paris, which will be published in 2024 as part of the prize. Crozier’s novel is a middle-grade adventure, being stories usually intended for readers aged from about eight to twelve years of age. The Best Witch in Paris sounds like it pitches centre middle of that demographic:

Luna is a spirited young witch raised by her aunts in the witches’ quarters of Paris and Melbourne, after they discovered her as a baby beneath a magic tree. When she is paired with her first familiar — a boobook owl called Silver — Luna is over the moon. But she soon discovers that the deliciously evil Madame Valadon has claimed the owl as hers and will stop at nothing to steal it. Determined to prove her power and solve the mystery of her birth, Luna embarks on a quest of her own — one that will surprise and empower her.

The Text Prize is awarded annually by Melbourne based Australian book publisher Text Publishing for the best manuscript written for young readers.

Immaculate by Anna McGahan wins 2023 The Australian/Vogel’s Award

16 June 2023

Book cover of Immaculate written by Anna McGahan.

Meanjin/Brisbane based actor and screenwriter Anna McGahan has been named winner of the 2023 The Australian/Vogel’s Award for Young Writers, with her novel Immaculate, which is set to be published on Tuesday 20 June 2023:

All Frances wants is a cure for her daughter, but that would take a miracle, and miracles aren’t something Frances believes in anymore.

Newly divorced from her pastor ex-husband and excommunicated from the church community she once worked within, she wrestles alone with the prognosis of her terminally ill child. Any suggestion of ‘divine intervention’ is salt in the wound of her grief. So when Frances is forced to take in a homeless and pregnant teenage girl who claims to have had an immaculate conception, she’s deeply challenged.

But sixteen-year-old Mary is not who she seems, and soon opens the door to perspectives that profoundly shift Frances’s sense of reality, triggering a chain of astonishing events. It seems that where there is the greatest suffering lies an unexpected magic. Frances begins to hold hope for her family’s future, but the miracle prayed for is not always the one received.

McGahan is the niece of late Australian author Andrew McGahan who died in 2019. I read his 2000 novel, Last Drinks — a crime/thriller set in Queensland ten years after the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police misconduct in the state — a few years ago. I can still smell the copious quantities of alcoholic beverages that featured in the novel to this day…

Michelle See-Tho wins 2023 Penguin Literary Prize

15 June 2023

Australian freelance writer and creative copywriter Michelle See-Tho has been named winner of 2023 Penguin Literary Prize, for her manuscript titled Jade and Emerald. See-Tho’s yet to be published novel tells the story of an acquaintance a lonely ten year girl develops with a well-off socialite, and the impact the friendship has on the girl’s relationship with her strict mother.

See-Tho will be awarded a cash prize and a publishing contract with Penguin Random House Australia. Awarded annually since 2017, the Penguin Literary Prize nurtures and supports new Australian writers of literary fiction.

36 Streets by T R Napper wins 2022 Aurealis best sci-fi novel

4 June 2023

Book cover of 36 Streets, written by T R Napper.

Australian science fiction writer T. R. Napper was named winner of the Best Science Fiction Novel award, with 36 Streets, in the 2022 Aurealis Awards, at a ceremony in Canberra, last night.

The novel, Napper’s debut, is set in a futuristic version of Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. In 36 Streets, the city is occupied by China, but residents seem to be preoccupied by a highly addictive stimulation of the American-Vietnamese war of the mid-twentieth century:

Lin ‘The Silent One’ Vu is a gangster in Chinese-occupied Hanoi, living in the steaming, paranoid alleyways of the 36 Streets. Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia, everywhere she is an outsider. Through grit and courage, Lin has carved a place for herself in the Hanoi underworld under the tutelage of Bao Nguyen, who is training her to fight and survive. Because on the streets there are no second chances.

Meanwhile the people of Hanoi are succumbing to Fat Victory, an addictive immersive simulation of the US-Vietnam war. When an Englishman — one of the game’s developers — comes to Hanoi on the trail of his friend’s murderer, Lin is drawn into the grand conspiracies of the neon gods: the mega-corporations backed by powerful regimes that seek to control her city.

Lin must confront the immutable moral calculus of unjust wars. She must choose: family, country, or gang. Blood, truth, or redemption. No choice is easy on the 36 Streets.

Established in 1995, the Aurealis Awards honour works of original speculative fiction written by Australian authors, which are published in the preceding calendar year. A full list of winners in the 2022 awards can be seen here.

Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp wins 2023 Dublin Literary Award

26 May 2023

German author Katja Oskamp has won the 2023 Dublin Literary Award with her 2019 book Marzahn, Mon Amour. The Dublin Literary Award is an international literary award that has been recognising excellence in global literature since 1994. Books written in, or translated into, English are eligible, but must be nominated by one of the award’s participating libraries.

After Story by Larissa Behrendt, Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down, and Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, were some of the Australian authors to be longlisted for this year’s award.

2023 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) winners

25 May 2023

Horse, by United States based Australian author Geraldine Brooks, has been named winner of the 2023 Literary Fiction Book of the Year, at the ABIA awards this evening. Horse is a story that spans centuries, and explores the connection unrelated people share in a race horse:

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South, even as the nation reels towards war. An itinerant young artist who makes his name from paintings of the horse takes up arms for the Union and reconnects with the stallion and his groom on a perilous night far from the glamour of any racetrack.

New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.

Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse — one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.

Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor won the General Fiction Book of the Year category, while Wake by Shelley Burr won the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year.

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Australian literature, literary awards

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov wins International Booker Prize

24 May 2023

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, book cover.

Georgi Gospodinov, described as the most translated and internationally awarded Bulgarian writer after 1989, has won the 2023 International Booker Prize, for his 2022 novel Time Shelter.

Translated by American literary translator Angela Rodel, Gospodinov’s fourth book features a curious medical facility that assists Alzheimer’s patients, by masquerading as a time machine:

In Time Shelter, an enigmatic flâneur named Gaustine opens a ‘clinic for the past’ that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time.

As Gaustine’s assistant, the unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a ‘time shelter’, hoping to escape from the horrors of our present — a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present.

The winning author and translator each receive half of the £50,000 prize money on offer. If there had been an award for best book cover of the International Booker Prize shortlist, I would have adjudged Time Shelter the winner at the time I wrote about the shortlist.

Debra Dank wins NSW Premier Literary Award Book of the Year

22 May 2023

We Come With This Place, written by Gudanji and Wakaja woman Debra Dank, was named Book of the Year in the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards this evening in Sydney.

We Come with This Place is a remarkable book, as rich, varied and surprising as the vast landscape in which it is set. Debra Dank has created an extraordinary mosaic of vivid episodes that move about in time and place to tell an unforgettable story of country and people.

Dank calibrates human emotions with honesty and insight, and there is plenty of dry, down-to-earth humour. You can feel and smell and see the puffs of dust under moving feet, the ever-present burning heat, the bright exuberance of a night-time campfire, the emerald flash of a flock of budgerigars, the journeying wind, the harshness of a station shanty, the welcome scent of fresh water.

We Come with This Place is deeply personal, a profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank belongs, but it is much more than that. Here is Australia as it has been for countless generations, land and people in effortless balance, and Australia as it became, but also Australia as it could and should be.

Dank’s 2022 debut title also won the Indigenous Writers’ Prize, the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction, and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing.

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