‘Amnesia Road’ wins 2021 Nib Literary Award

Luke Stegemann’s book Amnesia Road: Landscape, violence and memory (NewSouth) has won Waverley Council’s $20,000 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award.

Amnesia Road is a literary examination of historic violence in rural areas of Australia and Spain. Travelling and writing across two locations—the mulga plains of south-west Queensland and the backroads of rural Andalusia—Stegemann uncovers neglected history and its many neglected victims, and asks what place such forgotten people have in contemporary debates around history, nationality, guilt and identity.

Stegemann is a writer and cultural historian based in south-east Queensland. Amnesia Road previously won the 2021 Queensland Literary Award for nonfiction and was shortlisted for the Australian History Prize in the 2021 NSW Premier’s History Awards.

Son of the Brush by Tim Olsen (A&U) won the People’s Choice Prize, worth $2500. Olsen’s memoir documents what it was like to grow up in the shadow of his famous artist father, John Olsen. Each author shortlisted for the Nib Literary Award receives $1000.

Presented by Sydney’s Waverley Council and celebrating its 20th year, the Nib recognises the role research plays in fiction and nonfiction and is Australia’s only major literary award presented by a local council. The winner of last year’s prize was Rebecca Giggs for Fathoms: The world in the whale (Scribe).

For more information about the award, visit the Waverley Council website.

Category: Awards Local news