‘After some hectoring, Dale told them about the circumstances that lead to him being made redundant (‘who doesn’t wank at work?’ the eldest at the table said, and when the youngest was hesitant to support Dale, the older man yelled: “what are you a priest?!”). Dale laughed meekly with these people, who he felt a comfort with, a generation who had never picked him up on his behaviour.’

‘Prizes like these are always a particular blend of luck and happenstance, and I am truly grateful to whatever alchemy has allowed me to stand here tonight. I know for sure none of it would be possible without The Novel Prize, without Giramondo, without your support.’

‘[Jose] is a serious writer with an internationalist outlook that is not extractive – a rare thing – but eternally curious…His work often has a sense of mystery that shows his generosity also extends to readers. He’s not rushing to solve the world for us, or explain it, but opening our eyes to its wonders and complexities.’

Write the judges: Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow ‘signals a new direction in Australian literature’, and Lionel Fogarty’s Harvest Lingo is a book of intense commitment and power.’

‘I tried to take notes and wrap a narrative around all these events, to find parallels by way of allegory, to satirise the process itself as I went, allowing the march of 2022 to dictate the progress of the book. It was much more of an experimental process than I imagined, and it took a lot of work to bring it into some kind of order.’

Watch a recording or read a transcription of Fogarty’s acceptance speech, as well as a new poem, ‘Earth writes back to forward’.

‘I feel deeply honoured and really humbled to receive this award,’ Wright told ABC Arts of her Lifetime Achievement award. ‘But I also want to say, I’m not finished yet. I’ve got a lot more writing to come.’

Write the judges: ‘Praiseworthy is simply astonishing’; ‘Harvest Lingo offers a sovereign alternative to standard ways of poetic thinking and reading.’

‘Timor-Leste celebrated its twentieth anniversary as an independent nation in 2022. A new generation is writing their story now, with the future as a destination for hopes and dreams. It can be a happier ending. Let’s help with that.’ 

‘This book is not named for an imaginary figure from myth, or a character consigned to history, but rather the force she represents. A force which persists – fierce, intractable and undiminished.’

‘Open, the coffin shocked me. / I had thought that we were more disposed to keep things hidden. / Thought – I did not tick this box? / In any case, you looked well’

‘Chinese Fish is a brilliantly devised, comic feat of cultural resistance; a fantastically polyphonic verse novel majoring in riotously funny and heartbreaking ways, the minoritised experience of three generations of a Chinese family, who in the 1960s migrate from Hong Kong to Aotearoa / New Zealand, or, as white Australians hypocritically used to joke, the land of the wrong white crowd.’

‘We all grew up communicating in this hybrid language that we later couldn’t teach or hand down to our own children, because it was so make-shift, transitional…I am very happy to have written a little of it down now for posterity, in this book.’

‘AMERICA: I’m arranging (and re-arranging) my poems for you! I hope your hotels are cheap & your “ears” are open!’

‘I never thought I’d write a novel. But it’s the writing habit that I built up by keeping a diary, together with the help and encouragement of my beloved Tanvir Ahmed Chowdhury, my publisher and friend Bratya Raisu, and my friend Monzurul Ahsan Olee that led to the completion of the original, Bengali version of this novel called Hospital.’

‘Rushdi argues that there is not always one way to treat those with mental health issues. We, as a society, must do our utmost to approach and treat people in the way that is best for them. We must offer understanding and inclusion.’