Garner awarded 2023 ASA Medal

The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has announced Helen Garner is the recipient of the 2023 ASA Medal.

Established in 2003, the ASA Medal is awarded biennially to an Australian author or illustrator who has made an outstanding contribution to Australian culture, both as a creator and an advocate.

Said the ASA: ‘Helen Garner is one of Australia’s most beloved, celebrated, and admired authors, whose work has been published to acclaim for more than 40 years. Her impact on Australian literary culture is immeasurable and unparalleled.’ ASA chair Sophie Cunningham said Garner had been ‘integral to the Australian writing scene for decades: as a writer, as an advocate for, and mentor of, other writers, as a critic and commentator, and as a chronicler of the times’.

‘She’s an inspiration,’ said Cunningham. ‘We’re so delighted to be able to formally recognise and pay tribute to her invaluable contribution in this way.’

Garner said the award had ‘come as a lovely surprise’, adding: ‘I’m particularly delighted that it comes from that gritty, no-bullshit outfit the ASA, with its pragmatic understanding of what writers have to go through just to keep their heads above water.’

Garner’s debut novel Monkey Grip was awarded the National Book Council Award in 1978, her novel Cosmo Cosmolino was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 1993, her Time feature ‘Did Daniel have to die?’ was awarded the 1993 Walkley Award for Best Feature Writing, and her novel The Spare Room won the 2008 Victorian Premier’s Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, the Queensland Premier’s Fiction Book Award and the 2009 Barbara Jefferis Award. Her nonfiction works include The First Stone, Joe Cinque’s Consolation and This House of Grief. In 2006, Garner was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature, in 2019 the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, and in 2020 the Lloyd O’Neil Award for Services to the Australian Book Industry at the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs).

Garner will be presented with the 2023 award at the ASA’s annual Colin Simpson Memorial Lecture in Melbourne on 14 November. The winner of the 2021 medal was Bruce Pascoe.

Category: Awards Local news