Winners who keep winning: Australian awards news

Repeat winners, internationally recognised authors and the latest winners of Australian manuscript prizes 

As reported in the previous edition of Think Australian, Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy (Giramondo) has already won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Stella Prize, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, the fiction book award at the Queensland Literary Awards and the UK’s James Tait Black Prize. Stella judges said: ‘Fierce and gloriously funny, Praiseworthy is a genre-defiant epic of climate catastrophe proportions.’

Praiseworthy has since been announced as the winner of the Voss Literary Prize by the Australian University Heads of English, and Wright also won the $60,000 Melbourne Prize for Literature for her body of published work – which includes four novels and several works of nonfiction – ‘an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life’. In addition, Wright’s Stella Prize–winning 2017 book Tracker (Giramondo) has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction. Published in the UK in January by Other Stories, the book is one of 16 titles in the running for the £30,000 (A$59,442) prize.

Another ongoing prize winner, Melissa Lucashenko has won the $50,000 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award and the Waverley Council’s $40,000 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award for the novel Edenglassie (UQP). The judges for the Roderick award said Edenglassie takes its title ‘from an early colonial name for the city now known as Meanjin or Brisbane, with the stories in Edenglassie working in curves and circles, tying together the mid-nineteenth century and the present’. As previously reported in Think Australian, Edenglassie won the Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance, the fiction award at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, the adult fiction award at the BookPeople Book of the Year Awards, and the fiction award in the Indie Book Awards.

Meanwhile, Anna Funder has won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in the nonfiction category for the French translation of Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life (Hamish Hamilton). Funder’s book previously won the biography of the year award at the ABIAs and the adult nonfiction award at the BookPeople Book of the Year Awards, and it was also longlisted for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Nonfiction and for the Nib Literary Award.

Another internationally recognised Australian work is Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (A&U), which was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. The judging panel said of Stone Yard Devotional: ‘The past, in the form of the returning bones of an old acquaintance, comes knocking at [the protagonist’s] door; the present, in the forms of a global pandemic and a local plague of mice and rats, demands her attention. The novel thrilled and chilled the judges.’ Jenny Darling & Associates reported: ‘Ahead of Frankfurt and the Booker Prize announcement, we have now sold Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional into the following [markets]: ANZ: Allen & Unwin; UK: Sceptre; USA: Riverhead; France: Seuil; Germany: Kein & Aber; Italy: Fazi Editore; Turkey: Kultur; Ukraine: One More Page; Lithuania: Balto; Japan: Hayakawa Shobo; and Korea: EunHaeng NaMu.’

Other recent award winners across various categories are listed below.

Fiction

• The Ledge (Christian White, Affirm) won the QBD Book of the Year award for fiction and was shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards in the fiction category.
• Days of Innocence and Wonder (Lucy Treloar, Picador) and Songs for the Dead and the Living (Sara M Saleh, Affirm) were joint winners for the Barbara Jefferis Award.
• Thanks for Having Me (Emma Darragh, Joan) won the New Australian Fiction Prize as part of the Readings Prize.

Nonfiction

• Leading Wellbeing (Fleur Heazlewood, Major Street) won book of the year at the Australian Business Book Awards.
• Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty (Andrew Fowler, MUP) won the 2024 Walkley Book Award.
• The Voice Inside (John Farnham with Poppy Stockell, Hachette) won a QBD Book of the Year award in the nonfiction category.

Poetry

• Victorian-based poet, publisher and editor π.ο. (Pi-O) won the $20,000 Patrick White Literary Award.

Children’s and YA

• The Sinister Booksellers of Bath (Garth Nix, A&U) won best novel at the Ditmar Awards.
• Winners at the Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards included Let’s Play (Karen Tyrrell, illus by Maddi Gray, Play Matters) in the birth–3 years age category, Almost a Fish (Julianne Negri, illus by Evie Barrow, Little Book Press) in the 3–5 years age category, Harriet Hound (Kate Foster, illus by Sophie Beer, Walker Books) in the 5–8 years age category, and Being Jimmy Baxter (Fiona Lloyd, Puffin) in the 8–10 years age category.
• Our Flag, Our Story: The Torres Strait Islander Flag (Thomas Mayo & Bernard Namok Jnr, illus by Tori-Jay Mordey, Magabala) won the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Book Award at the Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards.
• Readings Prize winners included We Didn’t Think It Through (Gary Lonesborough, A&U) for the Young Adult Prize, Wurrtoo: The Wombat Who Fell in Love with the Sky (Tylissa Elisara, illus by Dylan Finney, Lothian) for the Children’s Prize, and A Way Home (Emily Brewin, MidnightSun) for the Gab Williams Prize.
• The winners of the YABBA Awards (Young Australians Best Book Awards) included Macca the Alpaca (Matt Cosgrove, Koala Books) in the picture storybook category, Hot Dog #10: Beach Time! (Anh Do, illus by Dan McGuiness, Scholastic) in the fiction for younger readers category, Runt (Craig Silvey, illus by Sara Acton, A&U) in the fiction for older readers category, and Scar Town (Tristan Bancks, Puffin) in the fiction for Years 7–9 category.

Unpublished manuscript prizes

Fiction

• Katherine Johnson won the inaugural Australian Fiction Prize for her unpublished manuscript A Wild Heart, receiving $20,000 in prize money and a $15,000 advance.
• Myles McGuire won the 2024 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers for his manuscript Stroke. Judges said of Stroke: ‘Evocative and addictive, it offers a layered exploration of morality, perception, class, sexuality and abuse. Using multiple perspectives to reveal the story adds great depth and complexity to a thought-provoking and nuanced examination of a scandal at a privileged all-boys school. The characters are fully formed and the dialogue faultless.’
• Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes won the 2024 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award for his manuscript የተስፋ ፈተና / Trials of Hope. The author received $15,000 in prize money, a publishing contract with Fremantle Press and a residency fellowship with the Centre for Stories.

Poetry

• Eva Phillips won the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for the manuscript Borrow-or-rob. Phillips received $2250 and a publishing contract with UQP, alongside editorial development with the publisher.

YA

• Michael Debenham’s Drowning for Beginners won the Ampersand Prize for children’s and YA debut fiction.

Body of work

• Bronwyn Bancroft received the Lady Cutler Award, a biennial award presented by the New South Wales branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) for distinguished service to children’s literature.
• Alice Pung won the Alice Literary Award, presented biennially to an Australian woman who has made ‘a distinguished, long-term contribution to Australian literature’.

Category: Think Australian awards