Gammage wins 2012 ACT Book of the Year Award

7 December 2012 Books+Publishing

Bill Gammage has won the 2012 Australian Capital Territory Book of the Year Award for The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (A&U).

Gammage’s book was selected from a shortlist of four books for the $10,000 award. The other titles shortlisted for the award were: Good Living Street: The Fortunes of my Viennese Family by Tim Bonyhady (A&U), Wolfgang Sievers by Helen Ennis (NLA) and Cold Light by Frank Moorhouse (Vintage).

As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, Gammage’s book won the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Nettie Palmer Prize for Nonfiction at this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. The book, which explores Aboriginal land management practices, also won this year’s Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History, the history book award at this year’s Queensland Literary Awards, and the individual section of the 2011 Manning Clark House National Cultural Awards.

The ACT Book of the Year Award is presented annually by the ACT Government for ‘quality contemporary published literary works by ACT writers’. Previous winners of the award include Chris Hammer for The River (MUP) in 2011 and Marion Halligan for Valley of Grace (A&U) in 2010.

For more information about the award, visit the Arts ACT website here.

Category: Local news