‘Extinctions’ wins 2017 Colin Roderick Award

Josephine Wilson’s Miles Franklin Award-winning novel Extinctions (UWA Publishing) has won the 2017 Colin Roderick Award and the HT Priestley Medal, administered by the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies at James Cook University.

The judging panel described Extinctions as ‘a beautifully written novel, characterised by total precision, as well as harmony, in word and thought’. ‘There are moments of profound and incisive emotional insight; these are presented in a style that avoids conscious “literariness” in favour of a distinctive mix of humour, precision, and poetry,’ said the judges.

Extinctions was chosen from a shortlist of eight titles announced in June.

The Colin Roderick Award and the HT Priestley Medal are presented to the ‘best original book’ published in Australia in the previous calendar year, which deals with ‘any aspect of Australian life’. The award, which comes with a cash prize of $20,000, is open to writing in any field or genre.

For more information, visit the website here.

Category: Awards Local news