News
Sean Rabin’s Wood Green has been shortlisted for The Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction
Wood Green by Sean Rabin has been shortlisted for the 2016 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. Now in its third year, the aim of the award is to recognise ‘exciting and exceptional new contributions to local literature’.
On Wood Green the judges commented: ‘Set in Tasmania, this is a charming, quirky and very clever debut novel, bursting with literary references and boasting a memorable cast of characters. A genuine pleasure to read.’
The winning author will be announced at midday on Tuesday 18 October, be featured in the November issue of the Readings Monthly, and will receive prize money of $4000.
To read more about the prize, visit the Readings website.
Lucy Dougan and Jennifer Maiden shortlisted for 2016 WA Premier’s Poetry Award
Two Giramondo poets have been shortlisted for the 2016 Western Australian Premier’s Poetry Award: Lucy Dougan for The Guardians and Jennifer Maiden for The Fox Petition.
The judges said of The Guardians: ‘Seemingly simple, actually very dense poetry, Dougan’s elliptical work hints at a life that hovers just beyond our comprehension; in dreams, tales, the past, in the imagination of the poet. This other world surrounds even the most domestic of the poems. Often funny as well as serious, the work is at the same time mysterious and haunting.’
On The Fox Petition: ‘Mostly long, often conversational poems between well-known political or public figures, Maiden’s poetry is sharp, witty and entertaining. Its focus is on rights of all kinds and for her the poetry is definitely, and defiantly, the political. While it often uses historical figures, the work is always marked by its contemporary significance and broad historical relevance.’
The prize-winners will be announced on Monday 3 October 2016.
For more information visit the website.
Fiona Wright winner of $30 000 Kibble Literary Award
We are excited to announce that Fiona Wright has won the 2016 Nita B Kibble Literary Award for her collection of essays, Small Acts of Disappearance. The Award, which is worth $30 000, celebrates female writers and their impact on life writing.
The judges said:
With the skilful use of language seen in her prize-winning poetry, Wright writes frankly and movingly about a difficult and very personal subject. Unlike many memoirs of illness and recovery, hers is not a story of triumph over adversity. The essay form allows her to resist closure, while also providing insights into her reading, her travels and her interactions with others.
For more information visit this site.
Martin Edmond’s Battarbee and Namatjira Shortlisted for National Biography Award
We’re excited that Battarbee and Namatjira by Martin Edmond has been shortlisted for the National Biography Award.
The Award was established in 1996 by Dr Geoffrey Cains and is administered and presented by the State Library of NSW.
The total prize value is $31,000 – $25,000 for the winner and $1,000 each for shortlisted authors – making it the richest national prize dedicated to Australian biographical writing and memoir.
The winner is announced each year in August.
For the complete shortlist, click here.
Fiona Wright Shortlisted for the Kibble Award
We’re delighted that Fiona Wright has been shortlisted for the Kibble Award for Established Writers for her essay collection Small Acts of Disappearance.
Established in 1994, the Kibble Awards recognise Australian female literary talent in honour of Nita Kibble, the first female librarian of the State Library of New South Wales. They comprise the Kibble Literary Award for an established author, as well as the Dobbie Literary Award for a first time published author.
For the complete shortlist, click here.
Joanne Burns and Lisa Gorton Winners of NSW Premier’s Literary Awards
We’re delighted that two Giramondo authors received awards at the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
joanne burns won the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize for brush of which the judges said: ‘While apparently modest in scope this intrepid and original poetry’s achievement is considerable as the commonplace is excavated in all its multifarious dimensions.’
Lisa Gorton was awarded the People’s Choice Prize for The Life of Houses.
For the full list of winners and judges’ citations, click here.
Giramondo Authors Shortlisted for NSW Premier’s Literary Awards
We are delighted to have so many authors shortlisted for this year’s NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
Lisa Gorton The Life of Houses
Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction
Fiona Wright Small Acts of Disappearance
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
joanne burns brush
Indigenous Writers’ Prize
Ali Cobby Eckermann Inside my Mother
For a full list of shortlisted titles, click here.
Fiona Wright Shortlisted for the Stella Prize
We’re thrilled that Fiona Wright’s Small Acts of Disappearancehas been shortlisted for the Stella Prize.
The judges say:
Small Acts of Disappearance is a collection of essays on anorexia, a disorder as disturbing as it is mysterious, even to its own sufferers. Documenting Fiona Wright’s experience from the beginning of her affliction, when she was a student, to her hospitalisation with a life-threateningly extreme version of the illness, the essays display a candour and an intelligence that describe the course of her illness with great precision and illuminate the sufferer’s motives and actions over time.
The narrative is crosshatched with other experiences and subjects: travel, autobiography, and literature – in particular writers who have used their art to anatomise the extremity of compulsion. The range of Wright’s research, from contemporary neurobiologists to old school modernists, and the quality of her insights make Small Acts of Disappearance a valuable book. Wright brings a sometimes melancholy, sometimes comic, well-informed honesty to an important subject.
For the full shortlist, click here.
Judith Beveridge shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2015
We’re thrilled that Judith Beveridge’s poetry collection, Devadatta’s Poems, has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2015. For a full list of shortlisted titles, click here.
Queensland Literary Awards Shortlistings
We are delighted to have two authors shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards.
Lucy Dougan’s The Guardians has been shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Poetry Prize and Nicholas Jose’s Bapo has been shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Short Story Prize.
For the full shortlist and winners, click here.
Felicity Castagna chosen for IBBY Australia Honour List
We’re thrilled that Felicity Castagna’s The Incredible Here and Now has been chosen at IBBY Australia’s Honour Book for Writing.
Of Felicity’s work, the judges said:
Dom dies in a car accident. Fifteen-year-old Michael has to learn how to live without his older brother, whose easy charm could open any doors. In this life-changing year, while his mother withdraws from the family, Michael, despite his strong sense of self, becomes somehow disconnected from his world. This gives the story an edgy feel as we experience with him his neighbourhood, his girlfriend and the cars which zoom up and down the street. The novel has a powerful sense of place, exploring the setting and cultures of the western suburbs of Sydney that many readers can identify with. Castagna’s sharp, observant writing shows compassion and insight and explores the themes of grief, loss, romance, culture and family life through a series of vignettes. Many light touches of humour contribute to making this compelling and accessible book a story about hope and finding one’s place in the community.
For more information about IBBY Australia, click here.
Alexis Wright Awarded a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship
We are delighted that Alexis Wright has been awarded a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship.
First awarded in 2011, the Sidney Myer Creative Fellowships provide grants of $160,000 over two years to individual artists, arts managers and thought leaders in the humanities. For more information on the fellowships and other recipients, click here.
Jennifer Maiden awarded ALS Gold Medal
We are delighted that Jennifer Maiden has been awarded the 2015 ALS Gold Medal for her poetry collection Drones and Phantoms.
Judith Beveridge Awarded Peter Porter Poetry Prize
We’re thrilled that Judith Beveridge has been awarded the Peter Porter Poetry Prize for her work, ‘As Wasps Fly Upwards’.
On winning the prize, Judith said:
I am deeply honoured to have won the Peter Porter Poetry Prize, not only because of the high regard I have for Peter Porter’s poetry and for Australian Book Review, but also because of the very strong 2015 shortlist. I loved all the poems and was truly surprised to hear I’d won. My sincere thanks to ABR for continuing this prestigious prize, which is a great support for poets.
For more information on the shortlisted poems, visit the ABR website, here.
Luke Carman wins NSW Premier’s New Writing Award 2015
We are delighted that Luke Carman has won the UTS Glenda Adams New Writing Award 2015 at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
The judges had this to say of Luke’s work:
Luke Carman’s witty collection of stories heralds a new, edgy and brilliant voice in Australian fiction. The elegant young man of the title is a well-read, acerbic character who goes by the name of Luke Carman. Immediately the writer’s erudition and craft are on display. Here we have a portrait of the artist as a young western Sydney man, failing repeatedly the machismo tests set by the street thugs and dealers of suburbs with the postcode 2170.
Through his unpretentious, playful stream-of-consciousness, the protagonist charts his own odyssey from Liverpool Boys High and the western suburbs to the more genteel, sophisticated inner west. Carman offers a cartography of the multiracial — and at times violent and drug-and-booze fuelled — neighbourhoods of western Sydney, and a map of the protagonist’s reading life. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Tolstoy, Whitman, Dylan Thomas and Hemingway sit alongside Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Henry Rollins, Seinfeld and Penthouse.
Carman’s epigrammatic stories, so perfectly suited to Giramondo’s Shorts form, build in intensity and poignancy. After a rollicking, sometimes brazen and shocking romp through fraught geographical, cultural and racial terrain, we are left with the almost nostalgic suggestion that perhaps there can be no more true heroes – no great Ulysses – in our modern world. But, Carman suggests, you should not let that get you down. An Elegant Young Man shocks, delights, depresses and inspires.
For a full list of winners, click here.
Michael Mohammed Ahmad, SMH Best Young Novelist 2015, Voss Prize Shortlisting
We’re thrilled that Michael Mohammed Ahmad has been named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelists, 2015, for his book The Tribe. The judges said:
Ahmad tackles this difficult subject matter with breathtaking honesty, gesturing towards a larger social canvas beyond the mind of a child that includes the struggle of migration, economic disadvantage, the difficulties of reconciling elements of the old and the new culture. Ahmad’s language is replete with lyricism, and a sense of wonder suffuses every page. It turns everyday experience into the stuff of poetry.
For full details of the winners, click here. The Tribe has been shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize. The prize is dedicated to the memory of Vivian Robert de Vaux Voss (1930-1963), an historian and lover of literature. His will stipulated that a literary award be established to reward the best work of fiction from the previous year. For more information and the full shortlist, click here.