Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2020 shortlists announced
Monday, 16 November 2020 Books+Publishing @booksandpublishing
The shortlists for the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards have been announced.
The shortlisted titles in each category are:
Fiction
- The Death of Jesus (J M Coetzee, Text)
- Exploded View (Carrie Tiffany, Text)
- Wolfe Island (Lucy Treloar, Pan Macmillan)
- The Yield (Tara June Winch, Hamish Hamilton)
- The Weekend (Charlotte Wood, A&U)
Poetry
- Heide (π.o., Giramondo)
- The Future Keepers (Nandi Chinna, Fremantle Press)
- Empirical (Lisa Gorton, Giramondo)
- Birth Plan (L K Holt, Vagabond Press)
- The Lost Arabs (Omar Sakr, UQP)
Nonfiction
- The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat: A rodent history of Australia (Tim Bonyhady, Text)
- Songspirals: Sharing women’s wisdom of Country through songlines (Gay’wu Group of Women, A&U)
- See What You Made Me Do: Power, control and domestic abuse (Jess Hill, Black Inc.)
- Sea People: The puzzle of Polynesia (Christina Thompson, HarperCollins)
- Hearing Maud: A journey for a voice (Jessica White, UWA Publishing)
Australian history
- From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia got compulsory voting (Judith Brett, Text)
- Progressive New World: How settler colonialism and transpacific exchange shaped American reform (Marilyn Lake, Harvard University Press)
- Sludge: Disaster on Victoria’s goldfields (Susan Lawrence & Peter Davies, La Trobe University Press)
- The Oarsmen: The remarkable story of the men who rowed from the Great War to peace (Scott Patterson, Hardie Grant)
- Meeting the Waylo: Aboriginal encounters in the Archipelago (Tiffany Shellam, UWA Publishing)
YA literature
- The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling (Wai Chim, A&U)
- How it Feels to Float (Helena Fox, Pan)
- The Honeyman and the Hunter (Neil Grant, A&U)
- When the Ground is Hard (Malla Nunn, A&U)
- This Is How We Change the Ending (Vikki Wakefield, Text)
Children’s literature
- Cheeky Dogs: To Lake Nash and Back (Dion Beasley, illus by Johanna Bell, A&U)
- One Careless Night (Christina Booth, Black Dog)
- Winter of the White Bear (Martin Ed Chatterton, Dirt Lane Press)
- Catch a Falling Star (Meg McKinlay, Walker Books)
- Cooee Mittigar: A story on Darug songlines (Jasmine Seymour, illus by Leanne Mulgo Watson, Magabala).
The winners in each category receive $80,000 and the shortlisted writers each receive $5000. All prizes are tax-free.
To read the judges’ comments for each shortlisted book, see the website.
Category: Awards Local news
