WA Premier’s Book Awards 2011 winners announced

The winners of this year’s Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards were announced on 17 September.

Fiona Skyring was presented with the $25,000 Premier’s Prize, which goes to the most outstanding book from the category winners, for Justice: A History of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia (UWA Publishing). Skyring’s book also won the $10,000 WA History Prize.

The awards were presented by WA Premier Colin Barnett, who also announced that Tim Winton has been inducted into the State Library of Western Australia’s Hall of Fame. Winton joins 15 other WA writers in the Hall of Fame, including Mary Durack, TAG Hungerford, Elizabeth Jolley, Katherine Susannah Prichard and Shaun Tan.

The winners in each of the categories are:

Nonfiction ($15,000)

Fiction ($15,000)

• All That I Am (Anna Funder, Penguin) 

Children’s ($15,000)

• Sam, Grace and the Shipwreck (Michelle Gillespie, illus by Sonia Martinez, Fremantle Press)

Poetry ($10,000)

• The Argument (Tracy Ryan, Fremantle Press) 

Young Adult ($10,000)

• Only Ever Always (Penni Russon, A&U) 

State Library of Western Australia WA History Award ($10,000)

• Justice: A History of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia (Fiona Skyring, UWA Publishing)

Scripts ($10,000)

• Cloudstreet (Tim Winton & Ellen Fontana, Penguin)

Digital narrative ($5000)

• Machine Man (Max Barry, Scribe)

People’s Choice ($5000)

• All That I Am (Anna Funder, Penguin).

To see the titles shortlisted for this year’s awards, click here.

As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, Kim Scott was awarded the 2010 Premier’s Prize last year for That Deadman Dance (Picador). Scott’s book also won the fiction category.

More information about the WA Premier’s Book Awards, including judges’ comments for each of the winning and shortlisted titles, can be found online here.

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Category: Local news