Blog Archives
The Miles Franklin Award 2013 – shortlist
The Miles Franklin Award is Australia’s most prestigious literary award and is awarded for the best novel representing Australian life. On the shortlist for the Miles Franklin Award this year are six wonderful novels:
Floundering by Romy Ash
The Beloved by Annah Faulkner
Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser
The Mountain by Drusilla Modjeska
Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany
The winner of the $60,000 prize will be announced on June 19 at The National Library of Australia in Canberra. The other five shortlisted authors will receive $5,000 from Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
You can read a synopsis and Judges notes for each shortlisted book here.
Winner of the Stella Prize
Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany has been announced as the winner of the inaugural Stella Prize for Australian women’s writing. Carrie Tiffany receives $50,000 in prize money for her achievement.
Kerryn Goldsworthy, chair of the Stella Prize judges, said, “Mateship with Birds is a deceptively gentle-looking novel whose calm surface belies its many sharp and frank observations about the world. Set in country Victoria in the 1950s, it follows the fortunes of two people whose loneliness is offset by the many active strands of their daily lives: Harry, a farmer whose wife has left him for somebody else; and Betty, an aged-care nurse whose two children have no visible father.
“Tiffany uses the two main characters’ interactions with each other and with a small supporting cast to show the intricate interrelations not only between people, but also between human life and the natural world. There’s complex interdependence among species, and human behaviour is reflected in even the smallest, most attentively observed details of the lives of animals and birds.”
Our Story Winning Titles
You may remember late last year and early this year there were voting sheets in the library branches where you could vote for one book that would represent NSW in Our Story - a National Year of Reading project to come up with books that describe what it means to live in Australia.
Residents of each State and Territory were eligible to read the short list of books representing each state and vote for the one that best represents their state or territory.
The books on the NSW list included Bereft by Chris Womersley, The Harp in the South by Ruth Park, The Idea of Home by John Hughes, Lilian’s Story by Kate Grenville, Sydney Harbour by Ian Hoskins and Torn Apart by Peter Corris.
The Idea of Home won in NSW and joins Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey, Listening to Country by Ros Moriarty, Smoke and Mirrors by Kel Robertson, Time’s Long Ruin by Stephen Orr, Wanting by Richard Flanagan, Well Done, Those Men by Barry Heard and The White Earth By Andrew McGahan.
Now take part in Australia’s biggest book group, based on the Our Story collection. Join a book club or take part in the online discussion with The Reading Room.
Children’s Laureates for the National Year of Reading
Alison Lester and Boori Monty Pryor have been named as the first Australian Children’s Laureates.
This is an initiative of the Australian Children’s Literature Alliance (ACLA) and has been established in Australia to promote the importance of reading following the successful implementation of Children’s Laureates in the UK and America.
Alison Lester is an award-winning author and illustrator. Over her twenty-one year career she has produced such classics as the Clive Eats Alligators series, Magic Beach, Imagine and My Farm, and recently she has also started writing novels, including The Quicksand Pony and the Bonnie and Sam series with Roland Harvey. Her picture book, Are We There Yet?, won the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award in 2005, and Running with the Horseswas an Honour Book in the 2010 CBCA Book of the Year Awards and 2010 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
Her picture books mix imaginary worlds with everyday life, encouraging children to believe in themselves and celebrate the differences that make them special. Alison is involved in many community art projects and spends part of every year travelling to remote Indigenous communities, using her books to help children and adults write and draw about their own lives.
Alison is also an ambassador for the National Year of Reading 2012. [Source : ACLA Children's Laureates page]
Boori Monty Pryor is a celebrated author, performer, dancer and poet. Boori has worked in film, television, modeling, sport, music and theatre-in-education. He has written several award-winning books with Meme McDonald including Maybe Tomorrow, My Girragundji, The Binna Binna Man and Njunjul the Sun. His picture book collaboration with Jan Ormerod, Shake a Leg, won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Children’s Fiction in 2011.
Boori’s stories are about finding strength within to deal with the challenges without, and his skill is to create positive visions of the future for both Indigenous and all Australians. [Source : ACLA Children's Laureates page]
As the Children’s Laureates for the next two years, Alison and Boori will act as ambassadors for Australian children’s literature nationally and internationally.
The Slap
Anyone else looking forward to this starting next week?
I read The Slap a while back with my book group and Dead Europe a few months ago. There are not many likeable characters in Tsiolkas’ books but he’s a very, very compelling, extraordinary writer.
Here are two reviews, one with video, the second with a ‘family tree’ for easier following of the story.
- The Australian (NB: Stephen Romei acknowledges in his blog, A Pair of Ragged Claws , that he’s got Anthony and Jonathan LaPaglia mixed up in the video)
- Fancy Goods Bookseller & Publisher blog
Happy viewing.
Australian Book Industry Awards 2011 Finalists
The finalists for this year’s Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) have been announced.
There are lots of book industry categories including Chain Bookseller of the Year, Independent Bookseller of the Year, Small Publisher of the Year and so on (see all the category finalists by clicking here) but as readers I’ll cut to what I think interests us most :
Illustrated Book of the Year 2011
A Food Lover’s Pilgrimage to Santiago De Compostela by Dee Nolan
Bill’s Basics by Bill Granger
Our Family Table by Julie Goodwin
Quay by Peter Gilmore
Real Food Companion by Matthew Evans
Yiwarra Kuju: the Canning Stock Route by the National Museum of Australia
(seems being a cook book gives you a leg up in this category)
Ben Cousins – My Life by Ben Cousins
How to Make Gravy by Paul Kelly
Lazarus Rising by John Howard
The Family Law by Benjamin Law
The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do
Here on Earth by Tim Flannery
Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd by David Marr
Street Fight in Naples by Peter Robb
The Changi Brownlow by Roland Perry
True Spirit by Jessica Watson
All Through the Year by Jane Godwin, illus by Anna Walker
Feathers for Phoebe by Rod Clement
Maudie and Bear by Jan Omerod, illus by Freya Blackwood
Mirror by Jeannie Baker
Noni the Pony by Alison Lester
The Legend of the Golden Snail by Graeme Base
Book of the Year for Older Children (8 to 14 years) 2011
Conspiracy 365 by Gabrielle Lord
Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley
Shakespeare’s Hamlet illus by Nicki Greenberg
Museum of Thieves: The Keepers Book 1 by Lian Tanner
Now by Morris Gleitzman
Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2011
Bereft by Chris Womersley
How it Feels by Brendan Cowell
Rocks in the Belly by Jon Bauer
That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott
The Legacyby Kirsten Tranter
After America by John Birmingham
At Home with the Templetons by Monica McInerney
Campaign Ruby by Jessica Rudd
I Came to Say Goodbye by Caroline Overington
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
Poh’s Kitchen by Poh Ling Yeow
The Bark Cutters by Nicole Alexander
The Family Law by Benjamin Law
The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do
I Came to Say Goodbye by Caroline Overington
Lazarus Rising by John Howard
The Family Law by Benjamin Law
The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do
