Readings announces 2016 New Australian Writing Award shortlist

Readings has announced the shortlist for its New Australian Writing Award.

The shortlisted titles are:

• Portable Curiosities (Julie Koh, UQP)
• The High Places (Fiona McFarlane, Hamish Hamilton)
• Music and Freedom (Zoë Morrison, Vintage)
• Wood Green (Sean Rabin, Giramondo)
• Ruins (Rajith Savanadasa, Hachette)
• Salt Creek (Lucy Treloar, Picador)

The award, worth $4000, recognises ‘exciting and exceptional new contributions to local literature’ and is open to ‘first or second published works of fiction by Australian authors’. Previous winners are Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals (Hamish Hamilton) and Stephanie Bishop’s The Other Side of the World (Hachette).

This year’s shortlist, which includes two short-story collections and four novels, feature stories that ‘range from South Australia in 1835 to Sri Lanka in 2008, with an extraordinary diversity of places and people in between’, said Readings in a statement.

The judges are Readings State Library Victoria shop manager Tom Hoskins, events manager Christine Gordon, book division manager Alison Huber, marketing manager Nina Kenwood and Hawthorn book buyer Simon McLean. They will be joined by Readings managing director Mark Rubbo and author Maxine Beneba Clarke to select the winner.

The shortlisted authors will feature on the cover of the September Readings Monthly, which will be inserted in the Age on Saturday and distributed at various events at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

The winner will be announced on 18 October 2016.

Category: Local news