Booksellers’ Choice 2020 Book of the Year Awards longlists announced

The longlists for the Australian Booksellers Association’s (ABA) 2020 Booksellers’ Choice Book of the Year Awards have been announced.

This year for the first time the awards will be presented in three categories: adult fiction, nonfiction and children’s. Previously the Booksellers’ Choice Award was presented to one title from any category each year. Last year’s winner was Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe (Fourth Estate).

The longlisted titles for the 2020 awards are:

Adult fiction book of the year

• The White Girl (Tony Birch, UQP)
• Peace (Garry Disher, Text)
• Silver (Chris Hammer, A&U)
• Cilka’s Journey (Heather Morris, Echo)
• There Was Still Love (Favel Parrett, Hachette)
• Call Me Evie (J P Pomare, Hachette)
• Good Girl, Bad Girl (Michael Robotham, Hachette)
• Bruny (Heather Rose, A&U)
• Wolfe Island (Lucy Treloar, Picador)
• Damascus (Christos Tsolkias, A&U)
• The Wife and the Widow (Christian White, Affirm)
• The Yield (Tara June Winch, Hamish Hamilton)
• The Weekend (Charlotte Wood, A&U)

Booksellers’ choice adult nonfiction

• Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga (Todd Alexander, S&S)
• Your Own Kind of Girl (Clare Bowditch, A&U)
• The Lost Boys (Paul Byrnes, Affirm)
• Against All Odds (Craig Challen & Richard Harris, Viking)
• When All Is Said & Done (Neale Daniher, Macmillan)
• Banking Bad (Adele Ferguson, ABC Books)
• Kitty Flanagan’s 488 Rules for Life (Kitty Flanagan, A&U)
• Australia Day (Stan Grant, HarperCollins)
• See What You Made Me Do (Jess Hill, Black Inc.)
• Finding the Heart of the Nation (Thomas Mayor, Hardie Grant Travel)
• The Whole Fish Cookbook (Josh Niland, Hardie Grant Books)
• Tell Me Why (Archie Roach, S&S)
• Sand Talk (Tyson Yunkaporta, Text)

Children’s book of the year

• Bluey: The Beach (Puffin)
• Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals (Sami Bayly, Lothian)
• All The Factors of Why I Love Tractors (Davina Bell, illus by Jenny Lovlie, Hardie Grant Egmont)
• The Tiny Star (Mem Fox, illus by Freya Blackwood, Puffin)
• Explore Your World: Weird, Wild, Amazing (Tim Flannery, illus by Sam Caldwell, Hardie Grant Egmont)
• As Happy As Here (Jane Godwin, Lothian)
• Mr Chicken All Over Australia (Leigh Hobbs, A&U)
• It Sounded Better In My Head (Nina Kenwood, Text)
• Young Dark Emu: A Truer History (Bruce Pascoe, Magabala)
• The Glimme (Emily Rodda, illus by Marc McBride, Scholastic)
• Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street (Felicita Sala, Scribble)
• Sick Bay (Nova Weetman, UQP)
• Eddie Woo’s Wonderful World of Maths (Eddie Woo, Macmillan)

The Booksellers’ Choice 2020 Book of the Year Awards recognise the titles that booksellers most enjoyed reading and hand-selling during 2019.

ABA members are now being invited to vote on the longlists to create shortlists which will be announced on Thursday, 4 June. Another round of voting will then take place and the winners will be announced on Wednesday, 8 July.

Category: Awards Local news