The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards began in 2008 and aim to recognise individual excellence and the contribution Australian authors make to the nation’s cultural and intellectual life. The panel of judges make recommendations to the Prime Minister for the shortlists and winners across each of the six categories but it is the Prime Minister who makes the final decision (and in 2014 Tony Abbott famously overruled the judges and made his own choice, The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan).
The winner of each category — Fiction, Non-fiction, Australian History, Poetry, Young Adult Fiction and Children’s Fiction — is awarded $80,000, with shortlisted entries each awarded $5,000.
The twelve judges over three judging panels for the 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards include:
- Fiction and Poetry panel – Louise Adler AM (Chair), Jamie Grant, Dr Robert Gray and Des Cowley
- Non-fiction and History panel – Gerard Henderson (Chair), Dr Ida Lichter, Peter Coleman and Professor Ross Fitzgerald
- Children’s and Young Adult fiction panel – Mike Shuttleworth (Chair), Dr Irini Savvides, Ms Kate Colley and Dr Mark MacLeod
And the shortlisted titles for the The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards shortlist for 2016 are:
Fiction
- Forever Young by Steven Carroll
- The Life of Houses by Lisa Gorton
- The World Repair Video Game by David Ireland
- Quicksand by Steve Toltz
- The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood
Poetry
- Net Needle by Robert Adamson
- Cocky’s Joy by Michael Farrell
- The Hazards by Sarah Holland-Batt
- Waiting for the Past by Les Murray
- The Ladder by Simon West
Non-fiction
- Tom Roberts and the Art of Portraiture by Julie Cotter
- On Stalin’s Team: the Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics by Sheila Fitzpatrick
- Thea Astley: Inventing her own Weather by Karen Lamb
- Second Half First by Drusilla Modjeska
- Island Home by Tim Winton
Australian History
- The Story of Australia’s People. The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia by Geoffrey Blainey
- Let My People Go: the Untold Story of Australia and the Soviet Jews 1959–89 by Sam Lipski and Suzanne D Rutland
- Red Professor: the Cold War Life of Fred Rose by Peter Monteath and Valerie Munt
- Ned Kelly: A Lawless Life by Doug Morrissey
- The War with Germany: Volume III—The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War by Robert Stevenson
Young Adult fiction
- Becoming Kirrali Lewis by Jane Harrison
- Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
- A Single Stone by Meg McKinlay
- Inbetween Days by Vikki Wakefield
- Green Valentine by Lili Wilkinson
Children’s fiction
- Adelaide’s Secret World by Elise Hurst
- Sister Heart by Sally Morgan
- Perfect by Danny Parker and illustrated by Freya Blackwood
- The Greatest Gatsby : A Visual Book of Grammar by Tohby Riddle
- Mr Huff by Anna Walker
The winners will be announced later this year. In the meantime keep up-to-date via the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards website or Facebook page or
Readers in the Mist 