Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2016 shortlists announced

The shortlists for the 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards have been announced.

The shortlisted titles in each category are:

Fiction

• Forever Young (Steven Carroll, HarperCollins)
• The Life of Houses (Lisa Gorton, Giramondo)
• The World Repair Video Game (David Ireland, Island Magazine)
• Quicksand (Steve Toltz, Penguin)
• The Natural Way of Things (Charlotte Wood, A&U)

Nonfiction

• Tom Roberts and the Art of Portraiture (Julie Cotter, Thames & Hudson)
• On Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics (Sheila Fitzpatrick, MUP)
• Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather (Karen Lamb, UQP)
• Second Half First (Drusilla Modjeska, Vintage)
• Island Home (Tim Winton, Hamish Hamilton)

Poetry

• Net Needle (Robert Adamson, Black Inc.)
• Cocky’s Joy (Michael Farrell, Giramondo)
• The Hazards (Sarah Holland-Batt, UQP)
• Waiting for the Past (Les Murray, Black Inc.)
• The Ladder (Simon West, Puncher & Wattmann)

Australian history

• The Story of Australia’s People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia (Geoffrey Blainey, Penguin)
• Let My People Go: The Untold Story of Australia and the Soviet Jews 1959-89 (Sam Lipski & Suzanne D Rutland, Hybrid)
• Red Professor: The Cold War Life of Fred Rose (Peter Monteath & Valerie Munt, Wakefield Press)
• Ned Kelly: A Lawless Life (Doug Morrissey, Connor Court)
• The War with Germany: Volume III—The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War (Robert Stevenson, OUP)

Young adult fiction

• Becoming Kirrali Lewis (Jane Harrison, Magabala Books)
• Illuminae (Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff, A&U)
• A Single Stone (Meg McKinlay, Walker Books)
• In Between Days (Vikki Wakefield, Text)
• Green Valentine (Lili Wilkinson, A&U)

Children’s fiction

• Adelaide’s Secret World (Elise Hurst, A&U)
• Sister Heart (Sally Morgan, Fremantle Press)
• Perfect (Danny Parker & Freya Blackwood, Hardie Grant Egmont)
• The Greatest Gatsby: A Visual Book of Grammar (Tohby Riddle, Viking)
• Mr Huff (Anna Walker, Viking).

Judging panels selected the shortlisted titles from 425 entries. The winners in each category receive $80,000 and the shortlisted writers receive $5000. All prizes are tax-free.

No date has been set for the presentation of the awards. For more information, click here.

Category: Awards Local news