Indie Book Awards 2020 shortlists announced

Leading Edge Books has announced the shortlists for the 2020 Indie Book Awards for the best Australian books published in 2019.

The shortlisted titles in each category are:

Fiction

• There Was Still Love (Favel Parrett, Hachette)
• Bruny (Heather Rose, A&U)
• The Wife and the Widow (Christian White, Affirm)
• The Weekend (Charlotte Wood, A&U)

Nonfiction

• Your Own Kind of Girl (Clare Bowditch, A&U)
• 488 Rules for Life: The thankless art of being correct (Kitty Flanagan, A&U)
• Tell Me Why (Archie Roach, S&S)
• Sand Talk: How Indigenous thinking can save the world (Tyson Yunkaporta, Text)

Debut fiction

• Wearing Paper Dresses (Anne Brinsden, Macmillan)
• Allegra in Three Parts (Suzanne Daniel, Macmillan)
• The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone (Felicity McLean, Fourth Estate)
• Heart of the Grass Tree (Molly Murn, Vintage)

Illustrated nonfiction

• The Lost Boys (Paul Byrnes, Affirm)
• Finding the Heart of the Nation (Thomas Mayor, Hardie Grant)
• The Whole Fish Cookbook (Josh Niland, Hardie Grant)
• In an Australian Light (ed by Jo Turner, Thames & Hudson)

Young adult

• The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling (Wai Chim, A&U)
• Aurora Rising: The Aurora Cycle 1 (Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff, A&U)
• It Sounded Better in My Head (Nina Kenwood, Text)
• Monuments (Will Kostakis, Lothian)

Children’s

• The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals (Sami Bayly, Lothian)
• Into the Wild: Wolf Girl Book 1 (Anh Do, illus by Jeremy Ley, A&U)
• The Tiny Star (Mem Fox, illus by Freya Blackwood, Puffin)
• Young Dark Emu: A truer history (Bruce Pascoe, Magabala).

Chosen from longlists announced in December, the shortlisted titles were voted on by independent booksellers from around the country who are also members of Leading Edge Books. Panels of judges will choose winners in the six categories, and independent booksellers will vote to choose their overall Indie Book of the Year from the 24 shortlisted titles.

The winners will be announced on 23 March at the 2020 Leading Edge Books conference in Brisbane. Now in its 12th year, the awards ‘recognise and celebrate independent booksellers as the number one supporters of Australian authors’.

In 2019 Trent Dalton’s novel Boy Swallows Universe was named Book of the Year. For more information about the awards, visit the website.

Editor’s note: Books+Publishing is a partner of the 2020 Leading Edge Books Indie Book Awards.

Category: Awards Local news