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NSW Premier’s Literary Award winners announced; Pascoe wins Book of the Year

17 May 2016   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

Bruce Pascoe has won the $10,000 Book of the Year prize for Dark Emu (Magabala) at the 2016 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, which were announced at a ceremony at the State Library of NSW on 16 May.

The judges said Pascoe’s nonfiction work ‘reveals enormous Aboriginal achievement in governance and agriculture, and restores these to their rightful place at the epicentre of Australian history’. ‘Dark Emu is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what Australia once was, or what it might yet be if we heed the lessons of long and sophisticated human occupation,’ said the judges.

The winners in each of the other categories are:

Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($40,000)

  • Locust Girl: A Lovesong (Merlinda Bobis, Spinifex Press)

UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing ($5000)

  • An Astronaut’s Life (Sonja Dechian, Text)

Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction ($40,000)

  • Reckoning: A Memoir (Magda Szubanski, Text)

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($30,000)

  • brush (Joanne Burns, Giramondo)

Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature ($30,000)

  • Teacup (Rebecca Young & Matt Ottley, Scholastic)

Ethel Turner Prize for Young Adult’s Literature ($30,000)

  • Laurinda (Alice Pung, Black Inc.)

Multicultural NSW Award ($20,000)

  • Good Muslim Boy (Osamah Sami, Hardie Grant Books)

Indigenous Writer’s Prize ($30,000, joint winners)

  • Dark Emu (Bruce Pascoe, Magabala)
  • Heat and Light (Ellen van Neerven, UQP)

Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting ($30,000)

  • The Bleeding Tree (Angus Cerini, Currency Press in association with Griffin Theatre Company)

Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting ($30,000)

  • Deadline Gallipoli, Episode 4: ‘The Letter’ (Cate Shortland, Matchbox Pictures)

People’s Choice Award

  • The Life of Houses (Lisa Gorton, Giramondo).

Author Rosie Scott was also presented with a $10,000 Special Award for her ‘significant service to literature as an author and to human rights and inter-cultural understanding’.

In order to be eligible for this year’s awards, all works must have been first published, performed, broadcast or screened between 1 October 2014 and 30 September 2015. This period does not apply to the Indigenous Writer’s Prize, which is biennial.

The winners were chosen from shortlists announced in April. For more information, click here.

 

Category: Local news