Kibble and Dobbie Awards 2016 shortlists announced

The 2016 Kibble and Dobbie Literary Awards shortlists have been announced.

The three shortlisted titles for the $30,000 Kibble Literary Award for an established Australian female writer are:

• A Few Days in the Country: And Other Stories (Elizabeth Harrower, Text)
• Second Half First (Drusilla Modjeska, Knopf)
• Small Acts of Disappearance (Fiona Wright, Giramondo).

The three shortlisted titles for the $5000 Dobbie Literary Award for a first-time published Australian female writer are:

• Rush Oh! (Shirley Barrett, Picador)
• Reckoning: A Memoir (Magda Szubanski, Text)
• Salt Creek (Lucy Treloar, Picador).

The shortlists were chosen from longlists announced in April.

Humanities Australia editor Elizabeth Webby, State Library of New South Wales coordinator Rachel Franks and author Rosie Scott comprise the judging panel for the 2016 awards.

Webby said this year’s shortlists ‘demonstrate some of the many changes and continuities of life in Australia, especially for women’. ‘While the books shortlisted for the Kibble Award are mainly set in Sydney in recent decades, they provide great insights into such perennial human questions as the need to belong, to find friendship and love, balanced with the quest for independence and creativity,’ said Webby.

The winners will be announced at an event at the State Library of New South Wales on 14 July.

The Kibble and Dobbie Literary Awards are open to Australian female writers who have published a book of fiction or nonfiction classifiable as ‘life writing’. Last year’s winners were Joan London’s The Golden Age (Vintage), which was awarded the Kibble, and Ellen van Neerven’s Heat and Light (UQP), which won the Dobbie.

For more information about the awards, click here.

Category: Local news