Shortlists for 2018 NSW Premier’s History Awards announced

The State Library of NSW (SLNSW) has announced the shortlists for the 2018 NSW Premier’s History Awards.

The shortlisted works in each category are:

Australian History Prize ($15,000) 

• The Enigmatic Mr Deakin (Judith Brett, Text)
• Slow Catastrophes: Living with Drought in Australia (Rebecca Jones, Monash University Publishing)
• The Battle Within: POWs in Postwar Australia (Christina Twomey, NewSouth)

General History Prize ($15,000)

• The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders (Stuart Kells, Text)
• Korea: Where the American Century Began (Michael Pembroke, Hardie Grant)
• On the Stump: Campaign Oratory and Democracy in the United States, Britain, and Australia (Sean Scalmer, Temple University Press)

NSW Regional and Community History Prize ($15,000)

• Terminus: The Pub that Sydney Forgot (Shirley Fitzgerald, Ventura Press)
• Hidden in Plain View: The Aboriginal People of Coastal Sydney (Paul Irish, NewSouth)
• River Dreams: The People and Landscape of the Cooks River (Ian Tyrrell, NewSouth)

Young People’s History Prize ($15,000)

• Dr Huxley’s Bequest: A History of Medicine in Thirteen Objects (Michelle Cooper, FitzOsborne Press)
• The Fighting Stingrays (Simon Mitchell, Puffin)
• Marvellous Miss May: Queen of the Circus (Stephanie Owen Reeder, NLA Publishing)

Digital History Prize ($15,000)

• Right Wrongs (Yale MacGillivray, Bronwyn Purvis, Lorena Allam, Solua Middleton, Scott Gamble and Daniel Battley, ABC)
• Douglas Grant: The Skin of Others (Tom Murray, Tarpaulin Productions)
• We Don’t Need a Map (Warwick Thornton & Brendan Fletcher, Barefoot Communications).

The awards are judged by an independent committee of academics, historians and other sector professionals who have been appointed by the Premier, the minister for the arts or their delegates. This year, eight judges considered 194 entries across the five prize categories.

The winners will be announced at an event at the SLNSW, as part of the launch of NSW History Week on 31 August. For more information, click here.

Category: Awards Local news