The Speechwriter wins Russell Prize for Humour Writing

Martin McKenzie-Murray’s ‘savage, dark and uproariously funny’ satirical memoir The Speechwriter (Scribe) has won the $10,000 biennial Russell Prize for Humour Writing, Australia’s only humour writing prize.

McKenzie-Murray’s fictional debut is about a former speechwriter to the PM, Tony Beaverbrook, who writes his memoir from a prison cell while trying to figure out how it all went wrong.

Judges Wendy Harmer, Rawah Arja and Alistair Baldwin chose The Speechwriter from a shortlist of six announced in April, praising its ‘dazzling wordplay and sheer inventiveness’.

‘Forget every satirical political memoir you have ever read. The Speechwriter is here to re-invent the genre in a time where politics comes to us in fractals of the unreliable, shameless, self-serving, deluded and absurd,’ said the judges.

Also announced was the winner of the $5000 Humour Writing for Young People Award for a published work intended for readers between the ages of 5 and 12 years.

A panel of student judges awarded the prize to Rita’s Revenge (Lian Tanner, A&U) from a shortlist of six titles. Rita’s Revenge was described as a ‘hilarious mystery story about Rita a poet, outcast and duck who is out for revenge against a scruffy chicken called Clara’.

Nakkiah Lui won the 2021 Russell Prize for Black is the New White (A&U), and Philip Bunting won the inaugural Humour Writing for Young People Award the same year for Wombat (Scholastic).

For more information about the prizes, visit the State Library of NSW website.

Category: Awards Local news