Queensland Literary Awards 2014 shortlists announced

The shortlisted titles for the 2014 Queensland Literary Awards (QLA) have been announced by the State Library of Queensland (SLQ).

The shortlisted titles are:

Fiction

Nonfiction

• Stillways (Steve Bisley, HarperCollins)
• 1914: The Year the World Ended (Paul Ham, Random House)
• The Reef: A Passionate History (Iain McCalman, Penguin)
• An Eye for Nature: The Life and Art of William T. Cooper (Penny Olsen, NLA)
• Nature’s Line: George Goyder—Surveyor, Environmentalist, Visionary (Janis Sheldrick, Wakefield Press)

Young adult

• Zac and Mia (A J Betts, Text)
• The Incredible Here and Now (Felicity Castagna, Giramondo)
• The Accident (Kate Hendrick, Text)
• Tigerfish (David Metzenthen, Penguin)
• The Cracks in the Kingdom (Jaclyn Moriarty, Pan Macmillan)

Children’s

• Refuge (Jackie French, HarperCollins)
• The Ratcatchers Daughter (Pamela Rushby, HarperCollins)
• Big Red Kangaroo (Claire Saxby, illus by Graham Byrne, Walker Books)
• The Rules of Summer (Shaun Tan, Hachette)
• Smooch and Rose (Samantha Wheeler, UQP)

History

• Broken Nation (Joan Beaumont, A&U)
• The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania (Nicholas Clements, UQP)
• The Reef: A Passionate History (Iain McCalman, Penguin)
• The Forgotten War (Henry Reynolds, New South)
• The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (Clare Wright, Text)

Steele Rudd Award for an Australian short story collection

• Letter to George Clooney (Debra Adelaide, Pan Macmillan)
• The Promise (Tony Birch, UQP)
• An Elegant Young Man (Luke Carman, Giramondo)
• Only the Animals (Ceridwen Dovey, Penguin)
• Holiday in Cambodia (Laura Jean McKay, Black Inc.)

Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a poetry collection

• Devadatta’s Poems (Judith Beveridge, Giramondo)
• Free Logic (Rachael Briggs, UQP)
• Boom (Liam Ferney, Grand Parade Poets)
• Signal Flare (Anthony Lawrence, Puncher & Wattman)
• Earth Hour (David Malouf, UQP)

Emerging Queensland author manuscript award

• ‘Open Cut’ by Leanne Nolan
• ‘3 for a Wedding, 4 for Death’ by Julie Kearney
• ‘We Come From Saltwater People’ by Cathy McLennan.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony on 8 December. There is no shortlist for the David Unaipon Award for an unpublished Indigenous writer and the winner will be announced at the ceremony. The Courier-Mail Queensland Book of the Year People’s Choice Award shortlist has already been announced.

The winners in each category will receive a cash prize of $5000, and the ceremony will also see three $15,000 Queensland Writers Fellowships presented, along with a new $10,000 Queensland Premier’s Young Writers Fellowship.

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the SLQ is running the awards for the first time in 2014, taking over from the volunteer-led QLAs, which were established in 2012 following the axing of the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards.

For more information on the awards and fellowships, visit the QLA website here. 

Category: Local news