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Tasmanian Literary Awards 2025 longlists announced

Friday, 10 January 2025   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

The longlists for the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Awards have been announced.

Longlisted titles have been announced in four award categories, worth $25,000 each. The books longlisted in each of these categories are:

Premier’s Prize for Fiction

  • The Angry Women’s Choir (Meg Bignell, Penguin)
  • The Conversion (Amanda Lohrey, Text)
  • Francesca Multimortal (V C Peisker, Ashwood Publishing)
  • Heartsease (Kate Kruimink, Picador)
  • Hotel Echoed Romeo (Stephanie Hagstrom Panitzki, self-published)
  • Limberlost (Robbie Arnott, Text)
  • The Lost Child and Other Stories (Leigh Swinbourne, Ginninderra)
  • Milking Time (Rachael Treasure, HarperCollins)
  • The Unearthed (Lenny Bartulin, A&U)
  • Vanishing Point (Carol Patterson, Ginninderra)

Premier’s Prize for Nonfiction

  • A Very Secret Trade (Cassandra Pybus, A&U)
  • Broccoli and Other Love Stories (Paulette Whitney, Murdoch)
  • Convict Orphans (Lucy Frost, A&U)
  • Dogs in Van Diemen’s Land (Ian Broinowski, Forty South)
  • Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths (Matthew Lamb, Knopf)
  • Graft (Maggie MacKellar, Penguin)
  • The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner (Grace Tame, Macmillan)
  • Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here (Heather Rose, A&U)
  • Seasons in the South (Simon Grove, Forty South)
  • Wild Heart of Tasmania (Greg French, Affirm)

Minister for the Arts’ Prize for Books for Young Readers and Children

  • Amazing Animal Journeys (Jennifer Cossins, Lothian)
  • Before the Mountain had a Name (Fiona Levings, Forty South)
  • Digger Digs Down (Johanna Bell, illus Huni Melissa Bolliger, UQP)
  • Feathered Alphabet (Monica Reeve, Forty South)
  • The Letterbox Tree (Rebecca Lim & Kate Gordon, Walker)
  • Spellhound: A Dragons of Hallow Book (Lian Tanner, A&U)
  • Too Many Tigers (Monica Reeve, Forty South)
  • When You’re a Boy (Blake Nuto, Affirm)

Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry

  • AfterLife (Kathryn Lomer, Puncher & Wattmann)
  • Curving Into Light (Lorraine Haig, Forty South)
  • Dancing With Empty Prams (Susan Austin, Walleah Press)
  • Extraction (Kim Nielsen‑Creeley, Walleah Press)
  • Pacific Light (David Mason, Red Hen Press)
  • Say, a River (Pam Schindler, Ginninderra)
  • She Doesn’t Seem Autistic (Esther Ottaway, Puncher & Wattmann)
  • Slack Tide (Sarah Day, Pitt Street Poetry)
  • Unlikely Vessels (Pamela Leach, Ginninderra)
  • Ways to Say Goodbye (Anne Kellas, Liquid Amber Press).

Other categories included as part of the awards are the University of Tasmania Prize for best new unpublished literary work by a Tasmanian writer (worth $10,000); the Aboriginal Writer’s Fellowship for an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander writer living in Tasmania ($10,000 and a publishing opportunity in Island magazine); and the Margaret Scott Tasmanian Young Writer’s Fellowship for a young Tasmanian young writer aged 30 years and under ($5000 and a publishing opportunity in Island magazine). The People’s Choice Awards will also be presented, with voting open in February 2025.

The triennial awards, which ‘celebrate excellence in the Tasmanian literary sector’, were last presented in 2022.

 

Category: Awards Local news