Grant wins 2016 Walkley Book Award

5 December 2016 Books+Publishing

Journalist and author Stan Grant has won the 2016 Walkley Book Award for his memoir Talking to My Country (HarperCollins).

Grant was chosen from a longlist of nine announced in October.

Judges said Grant ‘writes with a power and a passion that evokes a visceral reaction in the reader’. ‘His message is important, but his great triumph is to cloak it in a narrative that is so personal and yet has the potential to touch the soul of every Australian,’ the judges said. ‘Anger is never far below the surface in this tome. Yet Grant is, at heart, optimistic about Australia and writes lovingly of his country. As he says, we can and must do better.’

Freelance journalist Jess Hill also won the feature writing award (over 4000 words) for ‘Suffer the Children: Trouble in the Family Court’, an essay published in The Monthly that was the culmination of a six-month investigation into the Family Court’s response to allegations of domestic violence. Hill’s book Power & Control will be published by Black Inc. in 2017

Category: Local news