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Queensland Literary Awards 2024 winners announced

Friday, 6 September 2024   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

The winners of the 2024 Queensland Literary Awards have been announced, with the total value of the awards now standing at $276,000, up from $238,500 in 2023.

Melissa Lucashenko has won the award for a work of state significance for Edenglassie (UQP), after she previously won the award in 2019 for Too Much Lip (UQP). Judges described Edenglassie as a ‘historical tapestry that tears down barriers between past and present’, adding that Lucashenko’s ‘deft storytelling bridges centuries with compelling characters and immersive detail, forging a narrative that not only evokes the complexities of history but also profoundly reimagines Australia’s collective memory’.

The winner of the fiction award was Sharlene Allsopp’s The Great Undoing (Ultimo), described by the judges as ‘an anti-colonial collage’ that ‘disrupts readers’ understandings of time, telling and place to ask how much of our histories are taken—and who gets to tell our stories’.

The winning titles in each category are:

Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance ($30,000)

Queensland Writers Fellowships  ($20,000 each, plus professional development support to the value of $4500)

  • Jarad Bruinstroop for the novel project ‘For the Duration’
  • Sarah Kanake for the novel project ‘Lazarus; or, The Whale’
  • Cheryl Leavy for the poetry and essay project ‘Mudhunda—Song Country’

Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Awards ($12,000 each, plus career development support to the value of $3,000 each)

  • Gavin Yuan Gao
  • Myles McGuire

Fiction Book Award ($15,000)

Nonfiction Book Award ($15,000)

  • Bullet, Paper, Rock: A Memoir of Words and Wars (Abbas El-Zein, Upswell)

Children’s Book Award ($15,000)

  • Sunshine on Vinegar Street (Karen Comer, A&U Children’s)

Young Adult Book Award ($15,000)

  • The Spider and Her Demons (sydney khoo, Penguin)

Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection ($15,000)

  • Firelight (John Morrissey, Text)

Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection ($17,500)

  • Three Books (L K Holt, Vagabond)

David Unaipon Award for an Emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Writer ($20,000)

  • ‘Native Rage’ by Dominic Guerrera

Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer ($15,000)

  • Emily Lighezzolo for the manuscript ‘Life Drawing’

People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award ($15,000)

  • Breath (Carly-Jay Metcalfe, UQP).

Selected from a shortlist announced in August, the winners were announced at ceremony livestreamed on the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) website on 5 September.

‘This year’s Queensland Literary Award winners remind us how the very best writing actively examines the complexities of the human condition,’ said SLQ state librarian and CEO Vicki McDonald. ‘Through reflection, imagination and documentation, these authors show us this rare skill, across genres, styles and subjects.’

More information about the awards is available on the SLQ website.

 

Category: Awards Local news