“Clever Men” wins 2025 Nib Literary Award

Historian and essayist Martin Thomas has been awarded the 2025 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award, worth $40,000, for Clever Men (A&U).

Chosen from a longlist announced in August and a shortlist announced in September, Clever Men delves into what happened when “bungling egotist” Charles Mountford led a team of Australian and American scientists to explore traditional Aboriginal life in Arnhem Land in 1948. Drawing on years of collaborative research with Arnhem Land communities, Thomas portrays colliding worlds, scientific hubris and the world’s oldest surviving culture.

Thomas is a multi-award-winning researcher, essayist, documentary maker and oral historian whose work is driven by a deep interest in the meaning of landscapes, the legacies of colonisation and the drama of cross-cultural encounter.

Of the expedition, Thomas said, “A fiasco it might have been, but it left things of value including a treasure trove of films and sound recordings of Aboriginal life that are cherished by communities visited by the expeditionary scientists and anthropologists. My research involved finding that archival media and taking it to communities to see what they had to say about the expedition.”

Thomas added, “I’m thrilled, elated, and delighted that Clever Men has won the Nib Award. I’m still pinching myself. It’s a huge compliment of course, and an incredible endorsement of the intercultural research on which the book is based.”

The judging panel, which included writer, editor, and arts producer Lliane Clarke, publisher and editor Julia Carlomagno, and author and publishing professional Angela Meyer, selected Clever Men from 174 submissions.

Carlomagno said, “[Clever Men] is a poignant examination of the collision between Western scientific hubris and Indigenous knowledges. Almost 20 years in the making, it draws on oral testimony as well as archival resources and is based on close collaboration with the communities it features.

“It is exemplary historical scholarship and a cracking read. It tells a story of national significance and deserves to be widely read and absorbed.”

Rick Morton has won the $4000 Nib People’s Choice Prize winner for his book Mean Streak (Fourth Estate).

Each shortlisted author, including Thomas and Morton, will take home the $1500 as part of the Alex Buzo Shortlist Prize.

Presented by Sydney’s Waverley Council, the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award celebrates “the very best of Australian research-based literature”.

Waverley Council said that since the award’s inception in 2002, “a total of almost half a million dollars in prize money has been presented directly to authors with nominations judged on literary merit, research, readability, and value to the community”.

Last year’s winner was Melissa Lucashenko for her novel Edenglassie (UQP).

Category: Awards Local news