NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2017 winners announced

The winners of the 2017 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards were presented at a ceremony at the State Library of NSW on 22 May.

Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife (Currency Press), a retelling of Henry Lawson’s short story, was awarded the $30,000 playwriting prize and the $10,000 Book of the Year prize. The Drover’s Wife is the first play to win Book of the Year at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.

The Drover’s Wife previously won the Victorian Prize for Literature at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2017. Purcell has also received funding from Screen Australia to adapt her play into a feature film.

The winners of the other categories are:

Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($40,000)

• The Museum of Modern Love (Heather Rose, A&U)

UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing

• Letter to Pessoa (Michelle Cahill, Giramondo Press)

Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction ($40,000)

• Our Man Elsewhere: In Search of Alan Moorehead (Thornton McCamish, Black Inc.)

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($30,000)

• Ghostspeaking (Peter Boyle, Vagabond Press)
  

Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature ($30,000)

• Iris and Tiger (Leanne Hall, Text)
  

Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature ($30,000)

• One Thousand Hills (James Roy & Noël Zihabamwe, Omnibus)

Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting ($30,000)

• The Code: series two episode four (Shelley Birse, Playmaker Media)
• Down Under (Abe Forsythe, Riot Film)

Multicultural NSW Award ($20,000)

• The Hate Race (Maxine Beneba Clarke, Hachette)

The NSW Premier’s Translation Prize ($30,000)

• Royall Tyler
  

Multicultural NSW Early Career Translator Prize ($5,000)

• Jan Owen

People’s Choice Award

• Vancouver #3 in the series ‘Wisdom Tree’ (Nick Earls, Inkerman & Blunt).

The winners were chosen from shortlists announced in April. For more information, click here.

Category: Awards Local news