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Media Release
Shortlists announced for 2015 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Douglas Stewart Prize for Non‐fiction The Europeans in Australia, Alan Atkinson (NewSouth) Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power 1799‐1815, Philip Dwyer (Bloomsbury) This House of Grief, Helen Garner (Text Publishing) P&D-4345-10/2014
24/4/2015 The works of today’s leading Australian writers have been recognised with the announcement of the shortlists for the 2015 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. Twenty‐four judges considered hundreds of entries across nine prize categories, with the winners to be announced on Monday 18 May 2015. NSW Premier Mike Baird welcomed the announcement of the shortlists: “The NSW Premier’s Literary Awards have a proud history of recognising and encouraging our nation’s community of authors, translators and writers for screen, stage and radio.” Deputy Premier and Minister for the Arts Troy Grant said: “The awards celebrate the cultural significance of our literary talent and this year’s shortlists include works by established authors as well as new writers who will strengthen Australian writing now and into the future.” 2015 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards: Shortlists Christina Stead Prize for Fiction Only the Animals, Ceridwen Dovey (Penguin Australia) In Certain Circles, Elizabeth Harrower (Text Publishing) Golden Boys, Sonya Hartnett (Penguin Australia) The Snow Kimono, Mark Henshaw (Text Publishing) The Golden Age, Joan London (Random House Australia) A Million Windows, Gerald Murnane (Giramondo Publishing) UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing The Tribe, Michael Mohammed Ahmad (Giramondo Publishing) Foreign Soil, Maxine Beneba Clarke (Hachette Australia) The Strays, Emily Bitto (Affirm Press) An Elegant Young Man, Luke Carman (Giramondo Publishing) Here Come the Dogs, Omar Musa (Penguin Australia) Heat and Light, Ellen van Neerven (University of Queensland Press) Media Release
Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting The Code Episode 1, Shelley Birse (Playmaker Media) Upper Middle Bogan Season 1, Episode 8: The Nationals, Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope (Gristmill) The Babadook, Jennifer Kent (Causeway) Fell, written by Natasha Pincus & produced by Felix Media Please Like Me Season 2, Episode 7: Scroggin, Josh Thomas Once My Mother, Sophia Turkiewicz (Change Focus Media) P&D-4345-10/2014
The Reef: A Passionate History, Iain McCalman (Penguin Books Australia) In My Mother’s Hands, Biff Ward (Allen & Unwin) The Bush, Don Watson (Penguin Books Australia) Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry A Vicious Example, Michael Aiken (Grand Parade) Devadetta’s Poems, Judith Beveridge (Giramondo) Kin, Anne Elvey (Five Islands Press) Wild, Libby Hart (Pitt Street Poetry) Unbelievers, or The Moor, John Mateer (Giramondo) Earth Hour, David Malouf (University of Queensland Press) Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature The First Voyage, Allan Baillie (Puffin Books) Rivertime, Trace Balla (Allen & Unwin) Figgy in the World, Tamsin Janu (Omnibus/Scholastic Australia) The Duck and the Darklings, Glenda Millard & Stephen Michael King (Allen & Unwin) Crossing, Catherine Norton (Omnibus/Scholastic Australia) The Adventures of Sir Roderick the Not‐Very Brave, James O’Loghlin (Pan Macmillan Australia) Ethel Turner Prize for Young Adult’s Literature Book of Days, K.A. Barker (Pan Macmillan Australian) The Road to Gundagai, Jackie French (HarperCollins Publishers) Are You Seeing Me? Darren Groth (Random House Australia) Razorhurst, Justine Larbalestier (Allen & Unwin) The Cracks in the Kingdom, Jaclyn Moriarty (Pan Macmillan Australia) Cracked, Clare Strahan (Allen & Unwin) Media Release
Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting Brothers Wreck, Jada Alberts (Currency Press) The Sublime, Brendan Cowell (Melbourne Theatre Company) Jasper Jones, Kate Mulvany (adapted from a novel by Craig Silvey) (Barking Gecko Theatre Company) The Trouble with Harry, Lachlan Philpott (TheatreofplucK Belfast/MKA New Writing Theatre) Kryptonite, Sue Smith (The Sydney Theatre Company) Black Diggers, Tom Wright (Queensland Theatre Company) The NSW Premier’s Prize for Translation James Mark Quentin Davies Meredith McKinney Brian Nelson Royall Tyler 2015 Multicultural NSW (Community Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW) Jump for Jordan, Donna Abela (Griffin Theatre Company) Black and Proud: The story of an AFL photo, Matthew Klugman and Gary Osmond (NewSouth Publishing) Refugees, Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong (UNSW Press) I, Migrant: A Comedian’s Journey from Karachi to the Outback, Sami Shah (Allen & Unwin) The Tainted Trial of Farah Jama, Julie Szego (Wild Dingo Press) Once My Mother, Sophia Turkiewicz (Change Focus Media) Background notes  Works nominated for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards must have been first published, performed or screened between 1 October 2013 and 30 September 2014. This period does not apply to the Translation Prizes.  The Translation Prizes recognise an outstanding translator, rather than a particular work of translation. The judges of the Prize may give preference to translators who have had a significant work either published or performed during the two years prior to 30 September 2014. P&D-4345-10/2014
Multicultural NSW Early Career Translator Prize (NEW PRIZE) Ouyang Yu Lilit Zekulin Thwaites Media Release
 For the first time, The Premier's Translation Prize includes the Multicultural NSW Early Career Translator Prize ($5,000). The winner will be chosen from entries submitted for the NSW Premier’s Translation Prize. Sponsored by the Community Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW (Multicultural NSW), this prize offers acknowledgement, encouragement and financial support to translators in the first 10 years of their practice.  Writers and illustrators whose works are nominated must be living Australian citizens or persons holding permanent resident status.  The Awards are judged by an independent committee of writers, academics, critics and other sector professionals who have been appointed by the Premier or the Minister for the Arts or their delegates.  The inaugural NSW Premier's Literary Awards were presented in 1979 by Premier Neville Wran and were the first Premier's literary awards to be offered in Australia.  A ‘NSW Book of the Year’ may be chosen by the judging panel from among the winners of the individual prizes, and the Government may, at its discretion, make an additional payment of $10,000 prize money to the writer of the work so designated.  Last year’s literary winners included Michelle de Kretser's Questions of Travel (Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, joint winner of the Community Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW Award and winner of Book of the Year); The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane (UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing); Boy Lost: A Family Memoir by Kristina Olsson and Rendezvous with Destiny by Michael Fullilove (joint winners of the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non‐fiction). P&D-4345-10/2014
The NSW Premier’s Literary and History Awards are administered by the State Library of NSW. For more information please contact: Sara Fishwick, Acting Awards Coordinator, State Library of NSW (02) 9273 1582 or [email protected] MEDIA CONTACT: Vanessa Bond, Media & Communications Manager, State Library of NSW (02) 9273 1566, 0411 259 898, [email protected] NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2014 Shortlisted titles Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($40,000) Only the Animals Ceridwen Dovey Penguin Books Australia These remarkable short stories are a fictional thought experiment in which only animals are given full voice. Their multiple perspectives on creaturely existence yield up a complexity usually reserved for humans: unique characters of various species are revealed to be witty, eccentric, tragic and absurd. While filled with strong feeling, the stories proceed without a flicker of false sentiment. Nor does their rigorous deployment of contemporary developments in animal psychology and neuroscience undermine the primary pleasures of narrative. Indeed the best of the stories are not only smart in a modern, scientific sense; they keep one foot in the older, folkloric tradition of animal stories, and in a wonder that is as old as our species. They recognise that the relationship between animal and human was once governed by an acknowledgment of kinship, of mutual interdependence. Only more recently has the relationship hardened into the purely utile. What Dovey ventures in these pages is to rescue animals from the cultural margins; it is a profound inversion of the usual situation in which we do the watching. The results are powerfully disconcerting. In Certain Circles Elizabeth Harrower Text Publishing In harbourside Sydney after World War II, Zoe and Russell Howard befriend Stephen and Anna Quayle, brothers and sisters mutually intrigued by their social differences in a changing society. But as the relationships among the foursome deepen and shift, the personal effects of family history cause pain and potential tragedy. Miscommunication and the device of a letter play a part in raising the tension in an elegantly restrained but ruthless psychological study. In Certain Circles is Elizabeth Harrower’s final novel, which she withdrew from publication in 1971. Published now with the author’s permission, this drama displays the relentless pressure Harrower applies to characters in all her fiction, particularly the quiet power of men to tyrannise women. On one level a finely observed portrait of mid‐century life and marriage, written with graceful control, the novel shocks with dark undercurrents that erupt in conflict and despair, with a twist. Golden Boys Sonya Hartnett Penguin Books Australia When the Jenson family moves into a working‐class suburb of Melbourne the local children are enthralled by the father, Rex, a dentist who spoils them with attention, gifts and a swimming pool. Freya Kiley and her brothers spend time there, escaping from their own drunken father. But underlying the fun is the murky, disquieting question of what brings the middle‐class Jensons there and why they seem less content than they should. Some of the boys, including Rex’s eldest son Colt, grow increasingly uncomfortable as power games and tensions build. Sonya Hartnett gives Golden Boys her characteristic structural clarity, emotional subtlety and precise physicality. Moving between the adolescent viewpoints of Freya and Colt, while maintaining a supple third‐person narration, the writing is a prism that reveals multiple attractions, needs and dangers. Hartnett is masterful at capturing the metamorphosis from child to adult with all its vulnerability and strength. The Snow Kimono Mark Henshaw Text Publishing Mark Henshaw’s The Snow Kimono masterfully and playfully celebrates the power of fiction to create imagined worlds and characters. Through poetic, beautiful prose, Henshaw transports his readers across continents and generations, consciously seducing them into narratives of espionage, desire, deceit and death. The novel begins in Paris. It is 1989 and Auguste Jovert, a newly retired Inspector of Police, receives a letter from an Algerian woman claiming to be his daughter. Before having time to process this news, Jovert encounters the enigmatic Japanese Professor of Law, Tadashi Omura. And so begins a sustained relationship based on storytelling. Omura tells Jovert: ‘In Japan, we have a saying: If you want to see your life, you have to see it through the eyes of another’. The Snow Kimono invites readers to engage in just this kind of empathic imagination. It is, after all, what fiction does best. But fiction can also play dangerous games. The Snow Kimono is both a meditation on memory, love and betrayal and a puzzling, meta‐
fictive game about representation and illusion. The Golden Age Joan London Random House Australia Joan London’s The Golden Age is a work of quiet beauty. Set largely in a children’s polio convalescent home in mid‐20th‐century Perth, the novel is a moving meditation on adolescent love, on being open to experience and on how individuals find their place in the world. Frank Gold, the 13‐year‐old son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants, survives the Holocaust only to be struck down by polio in this strange new land of opportunity. As a patient at the Golden Age Home, he meets and loves the slightly younger Elsa. Polio robs these children of their immediate mobility, but it bestows on them a powerful sense of self and, for Frank, his vocation as a poet. Early in the narrative a young man dies from polio but not before recording a fragment of poetry: ‘I have to find myself/ A place where I can breathe./ That’s where poetry lives/ In the oldest part of us.’ A poetic consciousness informs this lyrical narrative. London’s crafted, sensual prose offers her reader a joyous breathing space in which to contemplate questions of fate, history, desire and service. Her diverse characters discover they are all essentially alone, yet through love and a sense of responsibility to others, they learn how to live in their various worlds of illness, exile and quiet despair. Importantly, this novel that engages with such a cruel, crippling disease is suffused with calm, golden light. A Million Windows Gerald Murnane Giramondo Publishing A Million Windows is a book of patterns. In its pages the narrator attempts to rescue small human markers from the broader landscape of a lifetime’s accumulated memory: recurring images and events that might yield some meaning to the perceiving self. The self under discussion here is, as always in Murnane’s writing, complicated. A Million Windows is narrated by a character who disclaims intimacy with his creator while offering up a series of meditations on the fictive craft. Those familiar with Murnane’s life and work will admire once again the richness with which the author’s few subjects are treated. The flatness of affect, the incorrigible circumlocutions of his prose and its sense of remove from the present moment cannot disguise strength of feeling, a stainless honesty. The cod‐scholarly apparatus of A Million Windows is not a joke on the reader so much as the enunciation of a paradox, or series of paradoxes that emerge from Murnane’s singular approach. His self‐referential fictions continually seek out that ideal Other, the reader, and remind us that it is only through literary invention that we might discover some tiny detail that explains the whole canvas of a real human life. UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing ($5000) The Tribe Michael Mohammed Ahmad Giramondo Publishing The three linked long stories in The Tribe enter the intimate home life of a Lebanese–Australian family in western Sydney. Narrated by a son of the large extended family, they recall incidents (domestic tensions, a wedding, a death) from his childhood — ‘but it feels like right now’. Indeed, Michael Mohammed Ahmad creates a deceptively simple blend of immediacy, naivety and authorial knowingness through scenes that are rich with realistic detail, empathy and humour. One of an impressive new generation of writers of immigrant background, Ahmad portrays a part of society and outer‐suburban life that have been newsworthy yet little understood. This family belongs to a small Muslim sect, and is shaped by a variety of religious, cultural and generational pressures. But this is not sociology, it is a group portrait of complex individuals written in lively colloquial language with a dash of grandeur that situates them with dignity in the history of humankind. Foreign Soil Maxine Beneba Clarke Hachette Australia The protagonists of Maxine Beneba Clarke’s stories are human beings who find themselves on foreign soil at what we might charitably call unpropitious moments. They do not have the luxury of roots. Instead they heave along on stunted radicals, torn from any fixed ancestry, drawing bare sustenance from the surrounding earth. Indeed it is this mobility that most offends and terrifies the ‘natives’ whose space they invade. Sometimes menacing, more often abject, they are the Triffids of the globalised present. Beneba Clarke specialises in describing the pain of the stranger hurt, in particular circumstances, by the grand diaspora of the poor world towards the rich. Yet the palette she employs is marvellously broad. Beneba Clarke’s creative ruthlessness, her willingness to invert the usual liberal pieties, saves her stories from being politically impeccable agitprop. The anger and despair stalking her characters, possessing them in an almost demonic fashion, stay with the reader even after the words with which they were summoned fade away. The Strays Emily Bitto Affirm Press Embarrassed by her own stolid parents, eight‐year‐old Lily is drawn to her classmate Eva’s bohemian, artistic household outside Melbourne in the 1930s. Told in Lily’s voice, reflecting her observant curiosity and her ignorance of adult life, The Strays is a sophisticated, suspenseful coming‐
of‐age tale that shines light on a small community which has charismatic energy but no rules. Lily’s excitement at having access to this glamorous world eventually gives way to understanding of the damage done to its inhabitants. Emily Bitto was inspired by the well‐known artists’ colony at Heide but the characters, story and perspective are her own. The period feels authentic, though it is created through a sharp contemporary eye that can see how these unconventional misfits might presage a later time. Framed by the present, the picture is delicately tinged by Lily’s adult nostalgia and regret. An Elegant Young Man Luke Carman Giramondo Publishing Luke Carman’s witty collection of stories heralds a new, edgy and brilliant voice in Australian fiction. The elegant young man of the title is a well‐read, acerbic character who goes by the name of Luke Carman. Immediately the writer’s erudition and craft are on display. Here we have a portrait of the artist as a young western Sydney man, failing repeatedly the machismo tests set by the street thugs and dealers of suburbs with the postcode 2170. Through his unpretentious, playful stream‐of‐consciousness, the protagonist charts his own odyssey from Liverpool Boys High and the western suburbs to the more genteel, sophisticated inner west. Carman offers a cartography of the multiracial — and at times violent and drug‐and‐booze fuelled — neighbourhoods of western Sydney, and a map of the protagonist’s reading life. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Tolstoy, Whitman, Dylan Thomas and Hemingway sit alongside Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Henry Rollins, Seinfeld and Penthouse. Here Come the Dogs Omar Musa Penguin Books Australia Omar Musa’s skills as a poet, rapper and playwright are combined in his debut novel, a coming‐of‐
age story with few precedents in our local context. Here Come the Dogs unfolds in a mix of poetry and prose that manages to be combative and rhapsodic simultaneously. It is a vessel ideally shaped to hold the tough, febrile and tender experiences of young men who dwell on the margins of society. Musa proves himself a superb anatomist of aggrieved masculinity, and his depiction of the experiences of ‘Generation 1.5’ — severed from their source culture but still not fully settled in their new home — turns a sociological phenomenon into a living wound. Musa brings street‐level knowledge to this story, and embeds that knowledge in a literary context without taming the anger that first inspired it. Heat and Light Ellen van Neerven University of Queensland Press Realism, Aboriginal knowledge and allegory all operate in Heat and Light as pathways to a deeper understanding of the self and how that self negotiates a sense of belonging to family, community and nation. Through a tripartite structure, Ellen van Neerven’s short story collection moves backwards and forwards in time, weaving family histories with contemporary identity politics and a dystopian futuristic scenario. There is an energy about these stories that is driven not only by the gutsy, gay, Aboriginal narrator who reappears in various guises throughout the collection, but also from the vitality of van Neerven’s prose. She is not afraid to take risks — in style and subject matter — and in her assured hands they pay off. This collection is most aptly named: in reading we experience the heat generated by stories of sexual transgression, illicit desire, domestic violence, mental illness, racism and dispossession, and the light that illuminates a varied range of narrative perspectives, building to a powerful and disturbing finale. Douglas Stewart Prize for Non‐fiction ($40,000) The Europeans in Australia Alan Atkinson NewSouth Books This remarkable book is a history of ideas in Australia. It is the third and final volume of a series that traces the day‐to‐day intellectual notions of Australian life, most notably the ideas that shaped the conception of Australia as a nation. Rather than a history of events, it is a history of the thinking that caused those events, revealing a commitment to ideas as the wellspring of action. Alan Atkinson creates a strong, engaging narrative by uncovering the stream of ideas nourishing the way Australians have related to the landscape, how they thought about freedom, how they argued about unity, how they conceived of power. He illuminates abstract concepts — for example, how maps change the way we imagine our place in the world, with deft details and lyrical prose. One of the most striking qualities is the way he interweaves historical knowledge and literary and philosophical references with a graceful ease. Combining a vastness of ideas and a depth of understanding with a poetic sensibility, Atkinson draws the reader into the multi‐textured life of the mind underlying both ordinary daily relationships and endeavours, and the life of a nation. Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power 1799–1815 Philip Dwyer Bloomsbury Citizen Emperor is the second volume of Philip Dwyer’s biography of Napoleon Bonaparte. Beginning with the 1799 coup that brought Napoleon to power, it examines the machinations that saw him rise to the position of Emperor, and follows his career through to the disastrous overreach of his Russian campaign and his defeat at the battle of Waterloo. Dwyer is particularly good at explaining the complicated political landscape of post‐Revolution France and supplies vivid accounts of Napoleon’s military adventures, his strategic thinking and tactical missteps. He is no less adept at drawing out the intricacies of Napoleon’s difficult personality and his fractious relationship with his family. Dwyer is also astute about the various ways in which Napoleon sought to cultivate his public image, shrewdly positioning himself as the champion of the Revolution and the saviour of France, while knowingly co‐opting the symbolism of royalty and consolidating his personal power. Citizen Emperor is at once a monumental feat of scholarship, an absorbing portrait of a deeply ambitious and deeply flawed man, and brilliant account of a towering figure in modern European history. This House of Grief Helen Garner Text Publishing This ‘true‐crime’ narrative has the fundamental elements of a Greek tragedy— love abandoned, a terrible vengeance, justice and retribution — all enacted in a quiet country town. A father has killed his own three young sons — drowned them by driving into a dam — in order to punish their mother, who has a new lover. The narrative follows the murder trial of the father, who claims the death of his children was accidental. With a forensic dedication to piecing the evidence together, Garner unfolds the story, not as a detached observer but as a fellow human being. She illuminates the characters and events, and her own responses, with careful attention and compassion. While allowing us to see her own humanity, she never puts herself above the characters involved in the trial. With clarity and flawless prose, Garner becomes our witness to horror; she will not let us look away and say it has nothing to do with us. More than a dramatic courtroom story, This House of Grief is an insightful meditation on the ways we construct both memory and truth and a revelation of the complexities and contradictions of the human heart. The Reef: A Passionate History Iain McCalman Penguin Books Australia Ian McCalman’s The Reef: A Passionate History describes 12 encounters with the Great Barrier Reef. It begins with the explorations of Captain Cook and Matthew Flinders and concludes with the contemporary story of naturalist John ‘Charlie’ Vernon, one the world’s foremost experts on the reef’s abundant marine life. In between, its subjects range from Eliza Frazer’s notorious tale of being shipwrecked among the Aboriginal people, to arguments generated between Darwinists and creationists in the nineteeth century by the Reef’s extraordinary natural beauty, to how that beauty has inspired environmentalists and writers such as Judith Wright. The Reef: A Passionate History lives up to its title: it is indeed a passionate book. Written in an engaging and accessible style, it is a heartfelt argument for the importance of the reef, not only as a unique and precious natural wonder, but as a site of great historical, scientific and cultural significance. The individual chapters work as fascinating self‐contained narratives, and together they open up a multifaceted view of this wondrous subject. The book culminates in a frank acknowledgement of the existential threat now posed to the reef by its ongoing environmental degradation. The Reef is not only a vibrant history, but a work that speaks urgently to the present. In My Mother’s Hands Biff Ward Allen & Unwin Biff Ward’s charismatic father, Russel, was a celebrated, sometimes controversial, historian; her mother, Margaret, suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness for most of her adult life. In the middle years of the twentieth century, the Wards put up a largely convincing facade of respectable family life. But like the prim white gloves with which Margaret hid her mutilated hands, the Wards’ conventional exterior concealed fear, silences and the mysterious death of a baby girl. In My Mother’s Hands offers a clear‐eyed account of a family’s struggle with mental illness at a time when the nature of that illness was not well understood and difference was stigmatised. Balancing compassion and candour, Ward draws nuanced portraits of both her parents. She recounts the unhappy consequences of her mother’s condition: the ineffective and harrowing medical interventions, terrifying episodes when the illness flared, and the emotional alienation and shame her mother’s peculiarity created within the family. Ward is also frank about her father’s personal shortcomings, while sympathising with his deep sense of frustration and dismay at his wife’s disturbing behaviour. Written without a trace of self‐pity, this is an insightful and moving memoir built around the author’s quest to untangle the puzzle of her sister’s death. The Bush Don Watson Penguin Books Australia The Bush is loosely structured around two large questions: What is the bush? What does it mean to Australians? Don Watson explores a range of shifting answers, travelling through time and space, through history and myth. The Bush encompasses clear‐felling and Aboriginal land management, swagmen and agribusiness, mining in Queensland and memories of a Gippsland farm. Watson is alive to the violence that underpins so many human interactions with the bush while remaining responsive to the idealism and hopefulness that also colour our dealings with the land. This is a grand work, as multifarious as the bush itself. Watson moves fluently between genres — social history, travelogue, nature writing and memoir — and produces memorable observations on every page. The intelligence of his writing is matched by the generosity of his vision, which finds room for mountain ash, weeds and the roses grown by farmers’ wives. Impeccably written, The Bush illuminates a kaleidoscopic subject central to our idea of ourselves. Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($30,000) A Vicious Example Michael Aiken Grand Parade An outstanding first collection, A Vicious Example is a vibrant, at times unsettling, but ultimately intimate and sympathetic panegyric to the city of Sydney. Opening with ‘ladies armed with fans’ performing morning exercises at Burwood Park, the book sweeps through a dark, labyrinthine psychogeography. It travels from the exotic suburban restlessness of Dulwich Hill and St Marys to the couplings and intersections of Anzac Bridge, Wynyard, Circular Quay and Central and the waterways of Darling Harbour, the Tank Stream and Maroubra Beach. Michael Aiken writes intimate portraits that honour and dissect everyday life; their precision reflected in his meticulous prosody, lineation and ideation. His poems, many composed while working as a security guard, are singularly refreshing for their repudiation of modish, routtine sentimentality and faux‐poignant moralising. They erupt at the convergence of the prosaic and the extraordinary, observing human fragility, agitation and desire in an urban theatre constantly permeated by nature. A Vicious Example is a daring and subtly acute book that makes a distinctive contribution to contemporary Australian poetry. Devadetta’s Poems Judith Beveridge Giramondo A resonant calmness of breath is what distinguishes the work of Judith Beveridge. It is a meditative voice achieved by mastery of the lyric art, and sustained by a spiritual outlook that can be best described as Buddhist; a way of seeing that is emptied of the ego, and a way of connecting to the world through intense, self‐obliterating acts of imaginative affinity. It is wonderfully incarnated in Devadetta, in a powerful narrative composed of superbly crafted monologues that plumb the mind and heart of the eponymous protagonist‐speaker. Beveridge’s natural empathy and her keen attention to detail allow her to flesh out Devadetta’s world vividly, in dramatic settings and vignettes that reflect his bodily travails and spiritual conflict. The focus is on a flawed character riven with desire and envy, rather than the Buddha. In poems alive with sensory details, the poetic voice is so firmly planted in the body of Devadetta that the poet seems to have immersed herself wholly in his world. With their exquisite form and imagery, the poems allow us to inhabit a self and world that, though so distant in time and space, strike home powerfully with insights into the struggle between the body and spirit. Kin Anne Elvey Five Islands Press This spare poetry investigates the body as a sensorium in its careful observations of the various ways of being in the world. The poetry’s sensual lyricism demonstrates how, through the body, we experience gravity, weather, light and sound. Skin is one interface between us and other humans and between us and the natural and urban world. The language of the poetry is itself a kind of skin that registers the bodily experience of kinship with trees, birds, sand and rain but also with the urban environment of steel, bitumen and glass. These relationships are fragile; the poems remind us of human mortality. Ecological damage and death also impact upon the non‐human world and much of the poetry has an elegiac tone. The possibility of forgiveness and grace flutter at the edges of these poems like the many birds they figure. The poems also investigate other forms of kinship such as ethical non‐Indigenous approaches to Aboriginal country and the memorialisation of loss and destruction. Kin is a meditative and thoughtful collection. It is marked with an unobtrusive erudition and intertextual references to a number of other poets ranging from Wilfred Owen to Judith Wright. Wild Libby Hart Pitt Street Poetry This powerful collection is informed with the wonder and wild energy of a bestiary of familiar creatures made unfamiliar through Hart’s sinuous lyricism; it is a catalogue of the ‘miracles’ of unruly life in its multifarious forms. The poems travel across the globe to invoke and pay homage to the range of knowledges and forms of beauty that elude us in our daily lives. We see the human apprehending and sometimes morphing with bird, fish, beast, insect, plant. The poems show us how animals and other energies of the natural world make their way into our lives, our cities and our sleep. Language in these poems works not simply as representation but as incantation, spell and offering. Language is a process of ‘making and unmaking’, a thread and a map that weaves us into connections with the world and its many non‐human actors — wind, bird, stone, whale, moon. The leaping arcs of the poetry grant us momentary access to experiencing the world through the ‘grizzly eyes’ of the bear, the pumping blood of a bird in full flight. This book’s coherence and unity, its imaginative inventiveness, clarity and lightness of touch are a signal achievement Unbelievers, or The Moor John Mateer Giramondo Over the past two decades John Mateer has singularly defined an Australian poetic sensibility that reaches west through the Indian Ocean antipodes to South Africa, north into the subcontinent and Asia and obliquely through modernism, postmodernism and postcolonialism. In Unbelievers, or The Moor Mateer closely follows the weave of medieval Islam, Christianity and Judaism in Moorish Spain and Portugal, dreaming and speaking of concrete but beautifully porous cultures, geographies and histories. This is the work of a mature artist whose control of form and genre underpins authentic, intelligent poetry that challenges our appreciation and understanding of humanity, our shared passions and ephemerality, and our ancient relationships with the earth. Mateer is refreshingly unafraid of romantic self‐consciousness. His poems remix the tension and possibility of the nomadic and syncretic, the ‘perpetually/renewable visas and self‐conscious amnesia’ that ultimately underpin encounters between life’s quotidian exotica, the memorable and the mundane. Mateer’s poems are exceptionally sensitive and smart, their positive, encultured and enculturing alloy engendering a universe that is vitally animated and irrevocably human. Earth Hour David Malouf University of Queensland Press Writing about late poems the American poet WS Merwin says they are ‘made of words/ that have come a long way’. This is the feeling one gets reading Earth Hour, that the words have been distilled from a lifetime of writing across the major genres. As late poems do, they recall past times and worlds, and absent friends, but there is also undiminished exuberance and appetite for life, and consoling glimpses of ‘a green original anti/‐Eden from which we’ve never been expelled’. The collection as a whole shimmers with the radiance of a lived and remembered life, the glow of poems recollected in serene joy and pleasure, restoring lost moments and faces in the light of the contemplative present. Malouf plays the music of memory with unerring graceful and verve, his touch sure, elegant and delicate in miniatures like ‘Toccata,’ with its haunting last line: ‘In the ghost of fingerprint all/ that touched us, all that we touched, still glowing actual.’ The elegiac note is accompanied by an attentive delight in cityscapes as well as the natural world, celebrating the breathtaking and sometimes terrifying beauty of the earth, ‘our green accommodating tomb’. Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature ($30,000) The First Voyage Allan Baillie Puffin Books Prehistory comes vividly to life in this telling of some of the first peoples to arrive on Australian shores. The Yam tribe coexist on Bird Island with two other tribes: the peaceable Crab and the warmongering Crocodiles, aggressive warriors who are determined to destroy the Yam and take over their territory. Eventually the Yam tribe, in fear for their lives, make the terrifying decision to leave their island and set off in search of a new home. The voyage is perilous and the tribe are utterly at the mercy of the ocean. The inevitable deaths are handled by the author with delicate poignancy. Allan Baillie creates the world and the people of the Yam tribe with depth and realism. The descriptions of the land, the sea, the sky and storms complement the well‐paced action of the story. Recognisable human personalities, relationships and foibles abound. The ingenuity of the Yam tribe’s men and women in preparing for and enduring their voyage is remarkably detailed. Bent Beak, aged about 12, narrates the story, in the present tense, and the reader can readily inhabit his world. The dialogue between characters sounds authentic, and moments of wry humour balance others of great drama. Rivertime Trace Balla Allen & Unwin A journey by canoe from the upper reaches of a river to where it meets the ocean is the simple, yet elegantly related story of this book, presented as a graphic novel for younger readers. Clancy, a likeable 10 and a half year old, is initially aghast at the thought of being so far from civilisation, from his computer games, toys and home comforts. Yet in the capable care of Uncle Egg — an admirably kind and empathic male father‐figure — Clancy’s eyes are gradually opened to the unfolding adventure and the wonders of nature, particularly birdwatching, about which Uncle Egg is so knowledgeable. Along the way, electronic games and devices quite forgotten, Clancy sets and achieves his own minor challenge to get from the river onto a wooden wharf without help. Rivertime works at a number of levels — as an information book, as a ‘road (canoe) trip’, and, with Clancy’s growing engagement with the natural world, as a coming‐of‐age story. Trace Balla’s illustrations work in great harmony with the text she has created, and the book is captivating throughout. The final illustrations are a heartwarming conclusion to this thoroughly enjoyable, informative and beautifully realised work. Figgy in the World Tamsin Janu Omnibus/Scholastic Australia Figgy, the intrepid and ingenuous young Ghanaian narrator of Figgy in the World, takes readers on a grand adventure. In Figgy’s little village, Grandma Ama has become ill, and the eight‐year‐old orphaned girl resolves to help, setting off with her goat for America, where she expects to find medicine to save Grandma Ama. This drama‐filled and humour‐touched tale weaves its way around Ghana, following Figgy into and out of a variety of mishaps involving the wide cast of distinctive characters she meets on her way. The first‐person narration is utterly childlike and convincing. A well‐developed, character with her own genuine voice, Figgy is intrepid and tenacious, but also believable in her naïveté and innocence. Her wonderful relationship with her new friend Nana evolves in a realistic and moving way, and the two children shine through in this well‐paced story that twists and turns its way to a most satisfying conclusion. Many cultural insights and sensory details of Ghanaian culture come alive in the telling. And while the hardship suffered in Ghana is clear, the values of friendship and love are at the heart of this delightful, memorable work of junior fiction. The Duck and the Darklings Glenda Millard and Stephen Michael King Allen & Unwin This lovely picture book depicts the poignant story of little Peterboy’s subterranean childhood. He lives in a world ruined by undefined human damage, where he is safely moored by the shelter and love of his grandfather. Early in the story, Peterboy brings optimistic splashes of colour to his cavern home. However, it is the arrival of the little duck (‘Idaduck’) — a symbol not only of nurture, but of the natural world regaining a foothold — that spurs Grandpapa to describe for Peterboy a previous world drenched in the colours of nature. Whilst Idaduck’s inevitable release into the wild could be a moment of overwhelming sadness, her flight takes the pages from darkness to light. The story’s final sentence is elegantly and quietly optimistic. Glenda Millard’s text is beautifully shaped and has a style all its own; her charming invented words are always immediately understood. The artwork is a crowning achievement for Stephen Michael King — his familiar gentle, quirky style is wonderfully rendered, even on the darkest of pages, and when colour blossoms at the story’s conclusion, it does so with great power. Crossing Catherine Norton (Omnibus/Scholastic Australia) With haunting echoes of the Berlin Wall, Crossing portrays a community living under the constraining shadow of a massive wall. An understated first‐person narrative evokes the world 11‐
year‐old Cara shares with her parents, who dedicate themselves to secret government work. They leave Cara to look after her little sister, queue for food and attend school. Using sharp, clean language, Catherine Norton creates a poignant portrait of Cara’s evolving dilemmas once she befriends some neighbours and begins to think a bit differently about the supposed safety ‘the Wall’ provides. Not set in a particular time or place, Crossing could easily take place in many settings; the issues it grapples with so skilfully are universal ones. The nonlinear structure of the dystopian story, with its frequent flashbacks, adds to the power of the prose. The reader, along with Cara, slowly puts the pieces together and begins to understand the impact of unfolding events. The characters are convincing in this compelling novel, with its spare, taut text and simple yet graphic setting. The mesmerising story raises many questions about families and values, rules and ethics, and, especially, about trust and freedom. The Adventures of Sir Roderick the Not‐Very Brave James O’Loghlin Pan Macmillan Australia In this imaginative, fresh and entertaining medieval fantasy romp, young teenage Sir Roderick finds himself on a quest to locate Banfor, the one person who Queen Emily has declared will save Baronia from invasion by the neighbouring Nareeans. No knight‐errant, Roderick’s lack of bravery tested many times. But he learns through his adventures about the difference between fear and cowardice, and what it means to show real courage. James O’Loghlin makes witty asides to the reader through a third‐person narrator, who relates Roderick’s episodic adventures. The tone darkens in the final third of the story, when revelations of political intrigue and family secrets cause Roderick, and the reader, to reconsider what is truth and what is not, and what is morally right or wrong. All the dilemmas Roderick encounters are vividly filmic. The plot is complicated and multi‐layered, but the action is nicely paced. A diverse cast of well‐drawn characters adds to the overall excitement and lightheartedness; the feisty Ruby and the frustrated giant flying cockroach are standouts. Roderick is especially realistic, and the reader comes to know and care about him intensely. Of particular note is Chester the bear, whose wonderful speech patterns bring many laughs. Ethel Turner Prize for Young Adult’s Literature ($30,000) Book of Days KA Barker Pan Macmillan Australian With The Book of Days, KA Barker has done something rather wonderful: reinvigorated the steampunk fantasy genre with a surprisingly original tale. The story centres on 16‐year old Tuesday, who wakes up in the brilliantly conceived Madame Marisol's Unreality House, where people go to escape their fate and be forgotten by the outside world. Tuesday has no memory of who she is or how she came to be there. The only person ever to have committed herself, Tuesday is cautioned against probing into the dark secrets of her past. Armed only with a letter from her former self, she ignores the advice and embarks on an adventure to discover her identity. The Book of Days is cleverly imagined and highly engaging. Barker manages to build a thrilling fantasy world, complete with steampunk modes of transport (dirigibles, dragon‐drawn chariots, cannon‐laden airships) and a hovering Fortune City. A cast of quirky and colourful allies and adversaries, sharp and sassy dialogue, and complex, vividly drawn characters — particularly the wonderful villain, Sterling — combine to make this a masterfully told yet rollicking story full of twists and turns. The Road to Gundagai Jackie French HarperCollins Publishers Perhaps what is most remarkable about Jackie French’s legendary output is the quality of her work and the depth of the research in her historical fiction. The Road to Gundagai is arguably the finest example yet of her ability to take the reader to another time and place. In this case the time is 1932, and the place is country Victoria, which has been ravaged socially, economically and physically by the Great Depression, and by drought. Into this barren, hopeless world shuffles Bluebell, a 16‐year‐old orphan girl who has narrowly survived a house fire, and is now being ‘cared for’ — possibly poisoned — by her aunts. She is desperate to escape, but the world is a scary place for a young girl who is disfigured, poor and virtually alone. So when the Magnifico Family Circus comes to town, Blue sees a perfect opportunity to escape, and to disappear almost without trace, literally overnight. But, of course, nothing is ever as it seems; not even the kindly circus family who saved her. With adroitly handled historical detail, evocative writing, intrigue, mystery, wonderful characters and settings — and the odd murder — The Road to Gundagai is, most importantly, a cracking good read. Are You Seeing Me? Darren Groth Random House Australia ‘Are You Seeing Me?’ is what Perry’s twin sister and full‐time carer Justine says to him when she needs him to refocus. Perry’s autism has impacted on every aspect of their family. When the twins were very young, their mother lost the ability to cope with Perry’s violent outbursts. She also tired of her husband being the ‘good cop’. So she left, ending up in Vancouver. But now, after Dad’s death, she’s reached out, hoping to make up for lost time. Justine suspects their mother wants to salve her guilt. But can it really be that simple to play happy families again? Using the twins’ distinctly‐voiced dual narratives, and the occasional saved letter from their ostensibly guileless father, Darren Groth employs several tropes of young adult literature to achieve a remarkably unselfconscious study of a family torn apart then reconfigured. Unlike many young adult novels, the circumstances in which this family finds itself cannot be apportioned to any one antagonist. Perry’s autism might be the fundamental cause, but none of this is his fault. Are You Seeing Me? is poignant, moving and funny, and offers a hymn to the resilience and beauty of families. Razorhurst Justine Larbalestier Allen & Unwin Kelpie has grown up orphaned in postwar Sydney. Surviving on the tough streets of Surry Hills, Woolloomooloo, Darlinghurst and Kings Cross, she uses her wits and cunning to stay one step ahead of the coppers and warring razor gangs. And ghosts. Lots of ghosts. Vividly characterised and completely immersive, this unusual mix of noir, horror and historical fiction is engaging from the first line. It draws the reader into a version of 1930s Sydney in which ghosts haunt the streets and the lingering remnants of colonialism crash hard against the Jazz Age. In Razorhurst, Justine Larbalestier has skilfully woven together elements of different genres to produce a work that moves seamlessly between historical reality and fictional imagination. Moments of visceral horror gain impact through the carefully measured pace of the narrative: the story is moved relentlessly forward by a sense of building tension. Kelpie is a lovely example of the naïf narrator, encouraging empathy from the reader as she is drawn ever deeper into events she can’t control. The Cracks in the Kingdom Jaclyn Moriarty Pan Macmillan Australia Beautifully written and deftly imagined, Jaclyn Moriarty draws her readers into a universe that flits between our world and … somewhere else. Madeleine and Elliot are pen‐friends. They’ve built the sort of friendship that can only form through difficulties shared. There’s just one problem: Madeleine lives in The World and Elliot in The Kingdom of Cello — two parallel worlds, joined by almost‐invisible ‘cracks’. When Elliot is recruited to the Royal Youth Alliance, both he and Madeleine find themselves caught up in high stakes politics and diplomacy. In The Cracks in the Kingdom, Moriarty realises both her characters and world with a gentle pace and immersive writing. Her craftsmanship is evident in the careful layering of plot and the skilfully organised narrative. Despite being the second volume in a series, this book stands impressively on its own. The writing is measured and, in places, almost ethereal. Each sentence invites the reader in, encouraging them to pause and enjoy the deft evocation of both the setting and characters. This is a fresh and original take on the parallel worlds motif, with lovely writing, and a highly engaging set of ethical and moral conundrums driving both character and plot. Cracked Clare Strahan (Allen & Unwin) At age 11 Clover experiences the first ‘crack’ in her life: the realisation that the planet is dying, and it’s our fault. Four years later and she’s feeling even more vulnerable, her life broken into fragile relationships: an embarrassingly ideological mother, an absent father, toxic ‘frenemies’, sleazy bullies, and a first love that creeps up on her ever so gently. For Clover, it feels as if she is negotiating her way through shards of glass on the floor. Sometimes she manages to avoid a fragment; other times she’s left wounded and splintered, but for the most part she’s deliberately smashing her way through, hurting herself and others. Beautifully written and paced, Clare Strahan’s tone is gentle and subtle yet able to pack a punch. She deftly avoids stereotype with her cast of ‘mean girls’, nerds, outcasts and jocks, and gives readers a character who, refreshingly, is not only grappling with the personal, but is struggling to make sense of a way she can reach a world where ‘no one is listening’. That Clover does some incredibly stupid things, while caring so deeply and passionately about the state of the world, lends a deep complexity and authenticity to her character. Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting ($30,000) The Code Episode 1 Shelley Birse Playmaker Media The Code is a compelling political thriller that moves from a complex relationship between two brothers to the political machinations of Canberra and a fictional outback community. The first episode launches into these seemingly disparate worlds when fringe journalist Ned Banks is handed a dirt file on a minister the government wants to be rid of — covertly. Ned finds a handwritten note in the file, apparently unrelated, with the word ‘Lindara’ written on it. Shouldering the responsibility of his mildly autistic brother, Jesse — a gifted computer hacker who’s already on a government watch list — Ned is drawn into uncovering the connection between government power and surveillance and the outback murder of an Indigenous teenager. This is a beautifully structured, intelligent, powerfully relevant piece of writing. Shelley Birse’s opening episode is a masterpiece of intrigue and story momentum. She skillfully interweaves plot strands, keeping the dramatic stakes high. Birse balances dodgy politics, delicate personal relationships and suspenseful action, building to an exciting end‐of‐episode hook. The characters are complex and well‐drawn, with voices that are exacting and distinct. Her writing is cinematic in its scope — a perfect blueprint for this political and uniquely Australian ‘David and Goliath’ story. Upper Middle Bogan Season 1, Episode 8: The Nationals Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope Gristmill Upper Middle Bogan shows two worlds colliding when well‐heeled anaesthetist Bess discovers she was adopted at birth. To her dismay, her biological family, the Wheelers, are cashed up bogans with a penchant for drag racing. In this episode, Bess has brought her own family (husband Danny, privately schooled twin teens, and posh adoptive mother) to a major drag race to support Team Wheeler. Bess’ family is not thrilled to be here, especially as it is Bess and Danny’s wedding anniversary. But Bess is also not feeling the love from her biological family. When she tries to buy Team Wheeler out of engine trouble, her generosity backfires, threatening this new‐found relationship. The challenges of writing comedy are often underrated and, ironically, a strong narrative comedy script achieves success by masking these difficulties. Butler and Hope have successfully created an entertaining, tightly written closing episode, filled with hilarious action and cracking dialogue. Although exaggerated, all characters — and there are many to be serviced — are bedded in reality. The ‘clash of classes’ theme could easily be a one‐joke gag, but Upper Middle Bogan goes deeper. The writers have infused their humorous plot with pathos and warmth, reminding us that the importance of family resonates beyond social class. The Babadook Jennifer Kent Causeway Films The Babadook centres on single mother Amelia and her young son Samuel, who are haunted by a mysterious character from a children’s book that comes to life as a dark vision at night. Amelia is still dealing with grief from her husband’s death in a car accident on the way to hospital to give birth to Samuel. As Samuel’s birthday approaches, the nightmarish Mister Babadook becomes more of a threat until Amelia and Samuel are locked in their home one night fighting for survival. The apparently possessed mother appears certain to kill her beloved son. Will Amelia be able to subdue the monster within? In a beautifully crafted script, Jennifer Kent elevates the horror genre with originality and intelligence. There is a strong sense of place — contemporary Australia — and a credible humanity to all the characters, especially Amelia. The subtle revealing of information has the reader wondering whether the threat from the Babadook is actually supernatural or is he really the manifestation of Amelia's grief and rising anxiety? While very effective in the horror genre, the story has a much wider resonance in showing a woman’s nightmarish psychological struggle with grief. Fell Natasha Pincus Felix Media A drama set in a timber community, where loggers fire ropes high into trees before climbing, Fell tells the story of two men separately affected by the tragic death of a young girl. While camping with her father Thomas, seven‐year‐old Lara is hit and killed by a logging truck. Jumping ahead in time, grief‐stricken Thomas changes his identity, calling himself Chris, and builds a new life as a logger in the bush. When the truck driver, Luke, gets out of jail and rejoins his logging crew, he teams up with Chris for a job deep in the bush, oblivious to their tragic connection. But when Luke’s five‐year‐old daughter Madeleine gets lost in the bush, the two men confront their shared despair and Chris is forced to choose between retribution and forgiveness. There is an admirable boldness and ambition behind an impressionistic script that shows the lives of two men as part of the cycle of death and regeneration in the Australian bush. Chris and Luke are vivid characters in the distinctive setting of a logging community. A potent story about the futility of revenge — and the need to move on after a tragic experience — is told with a great affection for the bush. Please Like Me Season 2, Episode 7: Scroggin Josh Thomas Pigeon Fancier Productions and John & Josh International In a departure from its regular urban setting, this self‐contained episode of Please Like Me has protagonist Josh and his mother Rose embarking on a five‐day wilderness trek in the wake of the suicide of Rose’s friend Ginger. Rose reveals she is carrying a suicide note from Ginger that she hasn’t read. While the trek offers an escape of sorts from recent tragic events, Josh and Rose are forced to confront Rose’s own past attempts at suicide and their effects on Josh. Alone with each other in the spectacular Tasmanian landscape, mother and son find they have nowhere to hide. This deceptively simple two‐hander deals with suicide and mental illness with delicate poignancy and humour. Josh Thomas’s writing is spare, natural and searingly honest as he depicts a flawed but quietly intimate parent/child relationship, in which the roles are reversed due to Rose’s illness. The gentle humour springs from character, and the challenging themes are treated with humanity and insight. In Scroggin Thomas has deftly taken his original and endearing characters on a literal and metaphorical journey that is a delight to read. Once My Mother Sophia Turkiewicz Change Focus Media Once My Mother is a deeply personal work in which Sophia Turkiewicz sets out to find the missing pieces in her mother’s extraordinary life story before it is too late. Helen, having come to Australia as a Polish refugee in the late 1940s, is nearing the end of her life, and slipping into dementia. Now finding herself mothering her mother, Turkiewicz is still coming to grips with her own enduring sense of abandonment and betrayal, seeking to finally comprehend the incomprehensible: how could her mother, herself an orphan, have abandoned Sophia as a child and placed her in an orphanage for two long years? Turkiewicz uses contemporary footage and interview, past works, family archives, historical archival footage, reconstructed material and a delicate narration in a masterful telling of an astonishing and touching story. Seamlessly weaving the personal and historical, her own life and her mother’s, and juxtaposing present and past, Turkiewicz creates a powerful, poetic and moving screenplay. Dealing with the complexities of grief, loss, betrayal and forgiveness, Once My Mother is ultimately a love poem from a daughter to a mother, delivered at the eleventh hour and all the more poignant for it. Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting ($30,000) Brothers Wreck Jada Alberts Belvoir/Currency Press Jada Roberts writes with vigour and honesty. This is theatre naturalism at its finest. It is at once deeply familiar and vividly fresh. Her story takes us into a world of suffering and sorrow, a small family group fractured by grief. Aboriginal youth suicide is a familiar issue in Australia and Brothers Wreck reaches deep into the personal details of this particular family story, persuading us to an intimate engagement with her characters and their struggle and survival. It is painful and moving, streaked through with humour, and ultimately hopeful. The boldness of opening a play with a death played offstage while the only character onstage is mute with horror suggests a confident storyteller. Jada Roberts writes with terrific confidence, energy and humour. She creates characters we absolutely believe. She crafts Ruben's withdrawal from his world, after his cousin’s suicide, with sensitivity and veracity. All of her characters are richly realised, each has their own distinctive voice, and each has the capacity to touch us. As does this gem of a play. Brothers Wreck is engaging and authoritative, a powerful play that persuades us to invest in these people and their stories and, crucially, the larger Australian story. The Sublime Brendan Cowell Melbourne Theatre Company Brendan Cowell’s The Sublime packs more than a punch. It pummels preconceived high notions about who we are as a sporting nation into a corner and leaves them bruised with a headache and a desperate need to reassess what just happened. Two brothers, footy pros, take along a young girl athlete to a post‐season Thailand bash. The party, booze fuelled and predatory in nature, ends in rape. Interweaving the monologues of three central characters Cowell’s darkly funny parody dives headlong into the overlay of violence in footy codes and violence against women. The gutsy move to spell out the blatant and casual misogyny, exposes how deeply ingrained, deeply rooted and unacknowledged the violence sits — how it permeates not just social and legal transgression in players and teams, but the gameplay itself. Even more daringly, Cowell lets a female character blur the lines, exploiting the rape allegations for her own financial benefit, while the real victim is left to suffer the consequences unacknowledged. The play exposes how fandom, regardless of gender, ignores the innate violence of the game. A deep look into the Australian sporting soul, it’s not nice to look at but it is compelling. Jasper Jones Kate Mulvany (adapted from a novel by Craig Silvey) Barking Gecko Theatre Company Funny, atmospherically dense, and with an unerring sense for dramatic arc and tension, Kate Mulvany elevates Craig Silvey’s novel Jasper Jones to the stage. Set in a small Western Australian town dominated by summer heat, everyday racism and the not‐too‐distant murmurings of the Vietnam War, it follows the struggle of the eponymous half‐cast hero Jasper. Mulvany draws us into Jasper’s world of persecution, beatings and small freedoms with the same otherworldly, intriguing and compassionate allure and sense of adventure that draws protagonist Charlie Bucktin into Jasper’s story. This is a very accomplished adaptation, its ease of storytelling belies the complexity of condensing Silvey’s novel into one and a half hours of theatre. Alternatingly funny and dark, humourous and disturbing themes dance, collide and merge under Mulvany’s apt hands, navigating the murky waters of bigotry, abuse and racism without so much as raising a didactic finger. Jasper Jones is irresistibly exciting, unsettling and profoundly moving. The Trouble with Harry Lachlan Philpott TheatreofplucK Belfast/MKA New Writing Theatre Lachlan’s Philpott’s diverse strengths as a playmaker are all on show here. He has tackled a cruel, obscure but all too human footnote in Australian history to produce a piece of theatre that is full of atmosphere, importance and provocation. The ‘man‐woman’ murder that piqued the salacious appetite of Sydneysiders in the 1920s is a truly remarkable story, and a difficult one to tell on stage. Harry Crawford’s unexceptional suburban marriage to Annie unravels with the arrival of Josephine, a daughter who simply leaps off the page. As the play reaches its dark conclusion, it powerfully examines questions that remain compelling in present society: ideals of homemaking, parental responsibility, sexual morality, love and trust, along with the rights and challenges of same‐sex marriage. It is a sophisticated and atmospheric world, constructed in great detail within a raw and distinctly Australian story. The dialogue is excellent, each character vivid and convincing, and their dogged and brutal living circumstances beautifully realised. Philpott brings broader scope to the drama through his typically confident sense of theatricality, using choral figures to represent the play’s central questions of the fluid nature of gender and identity and the disturbing possibility that human beings can perhaps never truly know each other — that intimacy will always involve deception. The Trouble With Harry is a beautiful and atypical Australian play. Kryptonite Sue Smith Sydney Theatre Company Taut, stimulating, topical, thoroughly engaging, ingeniously structured and so precise in its intentions, Kryptonite is a stunning new Australian play. Sue Smith’s brilliantly theatrical story embodies, in just two characters, the complex struggle for understanding between two very different cultures, the landmark events that have defined their contemporary history and the muddy game of politics that threatens to poison their hope for shared ideals in the future. The play spans the quarter century from 1989 to 2014. The terror of Tiananmen Square haunts the 42,000 Chinese students studying in Australia, among them the thoughtful, seemingly timid Lian. She gazes up at political student Dylan, who is protesting naked for Chinese democracy atop the Sydney University Quadrangle. Drawn to each other for reasons that will become increasingly ambiguous as the years pass, Lian challenges Dylan’s casual ideals and changes the trajectory of his life. The future Australian senator never quite breaks free from her orbit, compromising his and his country’s diplomatic future in the process. Smith makes us care very strongly for both of these people. They are intelligent and full of unpredictable dimension, their romance engrossing and exceptionally funny at times, their odyssey from youth to middle age played out in a series of engaging reunions that leave us feeling increasingly uncertain about our relationship to them. It is a fascinating and rewarding modern story, detailed in scope and research, and effortlessly theatrical in the playing. Black Diggers Tom Wright Queensland Theatre Company This powerful play includes the results of exhaustive research and much historical material is quoted verbatim. Tom Wright’s own beautiful, original writing adds richly to the complex and satisfying theatrical form, masterfully crafted into Black Diggers. This moving and vivid account of our Aboriginal servicemen places Indigenous soldiers at the heart of the Anzac myth. Irony and humour prevail throughout the narrative in glimpses of the young and hopeful deciding to enlist, and the horror of war told through letters home, short brutal episodes at the front, homecomings, and the striking monologues of the soldiers. Hymns and songs offer additional emotional layers. Aboriginal men expected their service in World War I would change the perspective of the white population back home. The stories of those who served, returned and suffered again the unchanged prejudices offer today’s audience profound revelations of the gross injustices suffered by the black diggers. This is old history made new, vividly brought to the stage through fluid and well‐paced storytelling. The span and the scope of this work is impressive and, with exquisite detail over 60 scenes, Wright makes the political personal. He quietly and systematically uncovers a dark chapter in Australian history, with humour, irony, poignancy, punch and the facts. The NSW Premier’s Translation Prize ($30,000) James Mark Quentin Davies J M Davies’ translations from German bring alive for readers early 20th century Vienna as captured by Jewish writers Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Though belonging to a specific historical moment, their works still speak powerfully in their portrayal of civilisation’s tenuous ability to control forces of violence, racism and barbarity. Davies has translated an impressive range of Schnitzler’s work: Dream Story, Selected Short Fiction, Round Dance and Other Plays. In Dream Story Davies’ translation brings out the energy and pace of Schnitzler’s account of the sudden eruption of violence into a seemingly stable life. In turns suspenseful, dramatic, poetic, eerie, idyllic, Davies makes this masterpiece available to the modern reader in convincing contemporary language. In Hofmannsthal’s Selected Tales shifting moods of elation and despair are described with the precision of a highly skilled miniaturist. Especially noteworthy is Davies’ translation of ‘Letter from Lord Chandos’, an early 20th century German short story purporting to be a letter written in Renaissance English now rendered as clear measured English prose that is both contemporary and just slightly Renaissance‐inflected. Meredith McKinney Meredith McKinney’s translations from both medieval and contemporary Japanese significantly extend our appreciation of a major body of world literature. Her translations of Essays in Idleness and Hojoki offer fresh versions of important classics. Maintaining a clear, lively but never sentimental tone, McKinney communicates well the quiet understated beauty of these works. Mori Ogai’s The Wild Goose provides interesting insights into early modern Japan in that period when it was first experimenting with Western innovations. However, it is Furui Yoshikichi’s White Haired Melody that most compellingly offers a fresh voice for contemporary literature. Furui Yoshikichi’s study of fear, ageing, death and human openness to what is mysterious in life is marked by a sure sense of style and poetic economy. Anchored in recent historic events like the Kobe earthquake and the Aum Shinrikyo subway attack, White Haired Melody convincingly brings us up against the uncanny in life and our own mortality. Through her sensitive treatment of both dialogue and description McKinney conveys the power of this highly poetic, haunting and haunted novel. Brian Nelson Brian Nelson’s translations from the French are distinguished by their fluency and linguistic scope. Focusing on Emile Zola, he has to date published five novels from the Rougon saga, Zola’s encyclopedic investigation of hidden territories of contemporary French life: The Ladies’ Paradise, The Belly of Paris, The Kill, Pot Luck and The Fortunes of the Rougon. Each of these novels explores a different world in exhaustive detail, and Nelson’s command of each is impressive, reproducing the full visual and sensual impact of settings as diverse as the central Paris market, with its acres of flesh and vegetables, and the opulent department‐store world of laces and fabrics. He captures Zola’s exuberant satirical style with sustained sensitivity to nuance, reviving the erudition without missing any of the humour. Zola’s descriptions are realities valid in themselves, but also politically charged symbols in a polemic so scandalous and subversive at the time that some works were banned, dealing as they do with such taboo themes as rampant sexuality, bourgeois hypocrisy and the savageries of the new mercantile realities. Packing a punch, Nelson’s Zola is fun to read. Royall Tyler Royall Tyler’s new translations of two lengthy Japanese classics make these ancient works highly readable and entertaining. Moreover, Tyler has restored vast tracts missing from earlier translations. The Tale of Genji details 11th century Japanese court life, while focusing on the many loves of Prince Genji. In Tyler’s translation the flow of the intriguing narrative is skilfully maintained through the judicious use of footnotes to explain words without equivalents in European cultures. The Tale of the Heike, the second of Tyler’s mammoth works of translation, recounts the 12th century events of Taira no Kiyomori’s tyrannical rule escalating into a bloody war that annihilates the House of Taira. Those times of turbulence highlight what it is to be human, and the characters of Heike have had a lasting impact on Japanese culture. Tyler’s translation addresses the stylistic diversity of the original, portions of which were in Japanese verse forms ready for recitation by skilled singers. In this way Tyler sets out to give the reader an understanding not only of the contents of this classic but of its literary form. Multicultural NSW Early Career Translator Prize ($5,000) Lilit Zekulin Thwaites To date, Lilit ZekulinThwaites’s most important translations from the Spanish have been two books of recent science fiction, a genre too often classified as being merely ‘popular novels’. But Tears in Rain by Rosa Montero and The Immortal Collection by Eva Garcia Saenz are both stories of compelling power and demonstrate the fact that popular books can also be significant books. Set roughly one hundred years in the future, Tears in Rain is both imaginative and deeply moving, with an engaging female ‘replicant’ protagonist and an aching sense of what it is to be human. Through the use of a brilliantly realised dystopia, it reads as a concerted plea for fundamental human values increasingly placed at risk in a technological world. The Immortal Collection has an ambitious historical scope, its timeframe spanning the evolution of humanity from its beginning to the present day. It is a complex saga, but one that never loses emotional momentum and excitement. Both books deal with intellectually challenging themes and require familiarity with sophisticated scientific, technological and historical concepts and vocabularies. Thwaites meets the challenges deftly and in a convincing contemporary idiom. Ouyang Yu Ouyang Yu has selected and translated the poems of 45 poets in Breaking New Sky: Contemporary Poetry from China. They are poems that moved Ouyang ‘emotionally or cerebrally’, and together they demonstrate the rich diversity of poetic voices in the rapidly changing world of contemporary China. Twelve of the poets are women, and this percentage is significantly higher than is the norm in most anthologies. The poets are drawn from various geographic areas of China; a few were born in China, relocated to Taiwan, and then the USA. Also several generations of poets are represented, the oldest having been born in 1913 and the youngest in 2002. Many highly accomplished poets are included in the anthology, but their poetry is virtually unknown to the English‐speaking world. While many Chinese novels have been translated into various languages, there are by comparison few translations of Chinese poets, particularly women poets. Ouyang’s versatile and highly skilled translations capture these diverse poetic voices, and confer upon these Chinese poets a presence and a space in the international world of contemporary poetry. 2015 Multicultural NSW (Community Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW) Award ($20,000) Jump for Jordan Donna Abela Griffin Theatre Company Jump For Jordan is a structurally ambitious play that moves between past and present, between Jordan and Australia, and between reality and the protagonist’s imagination. Sophie, a young archaeology student, is drifting through life with no money and no great interest in the subjects she studies when her mother contacts her after a three‐year estrangement. To please her mother, and to keep up family appearances for her visiting Aunt Azza, Sophie must pretend that she has a successful career and that she isn’t in a same sex relationship. Appearances are soon shattered, not just for the family, but for the audience too. Portrayed with humour and a light touch, the ultimately uplifting direction that these events take is one of the strengths of the play. The depiction of Sophie’s inner life is another high point. Sophie’s dead Palestinian father, Sahir, persists as a vital presence in her imagination and serves as a counterpoint to her Jordanian mother, who feels stranded in what is for her still a foreign country. The play conveys the richness of identities that immigrants leave behind, and also the misconceptions and assumptions that can obscure them. Abela shows that while the past can be full of unresolved traumas, it is also a place of nourishing traditions and important connections — a place from which new identities can grow. Black and Proud: The Story of an AFL photo Matthew Klugman and Gary Osmond NewSouth Books Black and Proud is inspired by the iconic photograph taken in 1993 of AFL player Nicky Winmar. It shows him lifting his jumper and pointing to his stomach in reply to racist taunts by the crowd, declaring ‘I’m black and I’m proud to be black’. Authors Klugman and Osmond use this as a stepping stone to explore racism, both in sport and in the community, and the way it has been challenged by Indigenous Australians. The authors’ have succeeded in writing a book that focuses on the world of AFL while being accessible to a general audience. Even those with little or no interest in football will be captivated by the story of resistance, power, pride and triumph that unfolds. Following the lives of each of the four protagonists towards their intersection at this pivotal moment in Australian history, the authors’ portrayal of the two Indigenous AFL players, Nicky Winmar and Gilbert McAdam, and the two photographers, John Feder and Wayne Ludbey, is dynamic and evocative. This narrative is skilfully juxtaposed against events unfolding in the world of sport and the wider community. Refugees: Why Seeking Asylum is Legal and Australia’s Policies are Not Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong UNSW Press Refugees is a lucidly written explanation and examination of Australia’s laws and policies in relation to asylum seekers. Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong have made accessibility their focus in this book that has been written for a general audience. By adding their own insights to the personal stories of refugees and asylum seekers and placing them within the context of international and Australian law, the authors have succeeded in writing a book that is both informative and easily understood. The work’s simplicity is its great achievement. In 186 pages of commentary, Refugees manages to make sense of the complex laws and policies that dictate Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. While the authors adopt a clear position in relation to successive governments’ immigration policies, the tone of the book remains measured and its arguments well‐reasoned. In this way, Refugees carries a calm authority in its consideration of this difficult and divisive area of the law. I, Migrant: A Comedian’s Journey from Karachi to the Outback Sami Shah Allen & Unwin) I, Migrant is a memoir by Pakistani journalist and comedian, Sami Shah, who, in the wake of bomb attacks and death threats, leaves Karachi to make a new life in rural Australia. Opening with Shah’s near death experience following a threatened collision with a kangaroo, the book takes us back to Karachi where we follow Shah, the journalist, as he grabbles with the news not of Benazir Bhutto’s triumphant return to Pakistan but instead of her assassination. From there, Shah segues into a commentary on the difficulties inherent in changing careers to become a comedian while living in a war zone. In spite of the often‐traumatic events he recounts, Shah imbues I, Migrant with an intelligent humour that entertains the reader without undermining the gravity of the situations he describes. Shah’s touch is light and warm. The comedian’s voice and style of observation underpins the narrative and comes bursting through at crucial moments as he relates the story leading to his immigration with generosity, humility and wit. The Tainted Trial of Farah Jama Julie Szego Wild Dingo Press This is the story of the wrongful conviction of a young Somali man for the rape of a woman he never met, in a Melbourne suburb he never visited. Through its exploration of the intricacies of a legal case gone wrong, the book explores the deeper questions of multiculturalism, the role of gender in society as a whole and the cultural prejudices and perceptions that inform and affect the experience of a new migrant. The Tainted Trial of Farah Jama is a thoughtful, evocative and penetrating account of a case marred by false assumptions and an unswerving faith in DNA evidence that ultimately proves misplaced. The narrative is clear and engaging and Szego’s voice is assured as she considers and questions her position as an outsider both to the trial and appeal proceedings and to the Somali community of which Farah Jama is a part. By mapping out some of the crucial complexities that occur within the immigration experience and finding their intersection with broader social issues, The Tainted Trial of Farah Jama presents both a compelling portrait of contemporary Australian society and a powerful argument for the value of multiculturalism. Once My Mother Sophia Turkiewicz Change Focus Media Once my Mother is a penetrating and exquisitely constructed exploration of the intersection between motherhood, memory, trauma and identity through the lens of an immigrant experience. Moving between past and present, Australia and Eastern Europe, the filmmaker’s inner conflicts and search for her own identity are a fascinating counterweight to her mother’s earlier struggle to survive some of the key historical forces that shaped the 20th century before starting a new life in Australia. Archival footage, stills and dramatic recreations are used to evocatively interleave the journeys of mother and daughter into a compelling narrative. By turns intimately confessional and deft in its historical contextualisation, the filmmaker’s voice beautifully elevates this personal and heartbreaking account into an exploration of the inevitable cultural gaps that open up between immigrants and the generations that follow them. The archival footage becomes a metaphor for the author’s own incomplete knowledge of her mother’s past and for her struggle to understand the actions of the woman who once abandoned her in an Australian orphanage and whose memory is now being eroded by dementia. Ultimately, this script shows how the immigrant experience can spotlight, with heightened intensity, many of the issues that make up the individual stories in our society as a whole — in short, how the most extraordinary experiences serve to hold up a mirror for us all.