Literary awards news related to fiction, poetry and drama produced in Australia or commonly seen as belonging in the Australian literature category are listed here. This includes many British and worldwide awards that also consider Australian literary works.
To see all the latest literary awards news, see the front page of The Burnt Ones: Literary Awards News.
Alexis Wright wins 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award
Date: July 7, 2007 | Discussion: 1 Comment
Alexis Wright has won the 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award for her novel Carpentaria. The award, which celebrated its 50th year, was established by the Australian author Miles Franklin to annually award the best ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’.
Carpentaria
by Alexis Wright
Carpentaria is Alexis Wright’s second novel, an epic set in the Gulf country of northwestern Queensland. The novel’s portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, leader of the Westend Pricklebush people, and its battles with old Joseph Midnight’s renegade Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright’s storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel teems with extraordinary characters - the outcast saviour Elias Smith, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, the murderous mayor Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist Will Phantom, and above all, the rulers of the family, the queen of the rubbish-dump and the fish-embalming king of time, Angel Day and Normal Phantom - figures of such an intense imagining, they stand like giants in this storm-swept world….
You can read more about Carpentaria at Amazon.com.
Filed under Australian literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Winners
Commonwealth Writers’ Prize winners announced
Date: May 30, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
The 2007 overall winners of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize have been announced. The £10,000 award for the overall Best Book and the £5,000 for the Best First Book were chosen from the eight regional winners selected earlier this year.
This year’s winners are:
BEST BOOK: Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. …
You can read more about Mister Pip at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
BEST FIRST BOOK: Vandal Love
by D.Y. Béchard
A family curse – a genetic trick resulting from centuries of hardship – causes the Hervé children to be born either giants or runts. An astonishing novel, Vandal Love follows generations of this unique French-Canadian family across North America, and through the twentieth century, as they struggle to find their place in the world. …
You can read more about Vandal Love at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.
Filed under African literature, Asian literature, Australian literature, British literature, Canadian literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Winners, World literature
Miles Franklin Award shortlist
Date: April 20, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
A four-novel shortlist for the 2007 Miles Franklin Award has been announced. Established in 1954 with a bequest from author Miles Franklin, the prize is awarded for the novel that presents Australian life in any of its phases with the highest literary merit.
The winner of the $42,000 (Australian) award will be known on Thursday 21 June 2007.
Careless
by Deborah Robertson
Eight-year-old Pearl tries very hard to get things right. In their cramped apartment, she watches over her small brother and manages her mother’s happiness, while carefully guarding her private passions. But the events of a summer’s day are about to change Pearl’s world, and nothing may ever be right again. In a cooler, greener suburb Sonia is learning to live alone after the death of her husband, and at the edge of the city, close to the beaches, the young artist Adam Logan is hoping that his controversial exhibit will improve his fortunes. In unforeseen ways, Pearl’s tragedy will draw the threads of all their lives together. Combining the intimacy of a family’s heartache with the suspense of a thriller, “Careless” is a gripping, seductive novel about the ties of caring and responsibility that are both formed and broken in today’s society, and about the resilience of the human psyche. …
You can read more about Careless at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Carpentaria
by Alexis Wright
Unfortunately, no description is available for this work.
Dreams of Speaking
by Gail Jones
‘We must talk, Alice Black, about this world of modern things. This buzzing world.’ Alice is entranced by the aesthetics of technology and, in every aeroplane flight, every Xerox machine, every neon sign, sees the poetry of modernity. Mr Sakamoto, a survivor of the atomic bomb, is an expert on Alexander Graham Bell. The pair forge an unlikely friendship as Mr Sakamoto regales Alice with stories of twentieth-century invention. His own knowledge begins to inform her writing, and these two solitary beings become a mutual support for each other a long way from home. This novel from Man Booker longlisted author, Gail Jones is distinguished by its honesty and intelligence. From the boundlessness of space walking to the frustrating constrictions of one person’s daily existence, “Dreams of Speaking paints” with grace and skill the experience of needing to belong despite wanting to be alone. …
You can read more about Dreams of Speaking at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Theft: A Love Story
by Peter Carey
Narrated by the twin voices of the artist Butcher Bones, and his ‘damaged two-hundred-and-twenty-pound brother’ Hugh, “Theft: A Love Story” once again displays Peter Carey’s extraordinary flair for language. Ranging from the rural wilds of Australia to Manhattan via Tokyo, it is a brilliant and moving exploration of art, fraud, responsibility and redemption. …
You can read more about Theft: A Love Story at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Filed under Australian literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Shortlists
Man Booker International shortlist announced
Date: April 12, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Shortlist for the 2007 Man Booker International Prize, a biennial prize awarding living authors published in English, has been announced. The listed authors are:
Chinua Achebe
Margaret Atwood
John Banville
Peter Carey
Don DeLillo
Carlos Fuentes
Doris Lessing
Ian McEwan
Harry Mulisch
Alice Munro
Michael Ondaatje
Amos Oz
Philip Roth
Salman Rushdie
Michael Tournier
Winner of the £60,000 prize will be announced in June. The first Man Booker International Prize, which was awarded two years ago, went to the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.
Filed under American literature, Australian literature, British literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Lifetime awards, Shortlists, World literature
2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction longlist announced
Date: March 19, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
The 20 books making up the longlist for the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction have been named. They are:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun
Clare Allan for Poppy Shakespeare
Rachel Cusk for Arlington Park
Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss
Patricia Ferguson for Peripheral Vision
Margaret Forster for Over
Nell Freudenberger for The Dissident
Rebecca Gowers for When to Walk
Xiaolu Guo for A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
Jane Harris for The Observations
M J Hyland for Carry Me Down
Lori Lansens for The Girls
Lisa Moore for Alligator
Catherine O’Flynn for What Was Lost
Stef Penney for The Tenderness of Wolves
Deborah Robertson for Careless
Rachel Seiffert for Afterwards
Jane Smiley for Ten Days in the Hills
Anne Tyler for Digging to America
Melanie Wallace for The Housekeeper
The Orange Prize for Fiction is an annual literary prize that awards the best English language full-length novel written by a woman of any nationality in the preceding year, and published in the UK. The winner receives £30,000.
This year’s shortlist will be unveiled on April 17th, and the winners will be known on June 6th.
Filed under American literature, Australian literature, British literature, Canadian literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Shortlists
2007 Miles Franklin Award longlist announced
Date: March 19, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Longlist for the 2007 Miles Franklin Award has been announced. The eight novels selected are:
Beyond the Break by Sandra Hall
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Silent Parts by John Charalambous
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
The Unexpected Elements of Love by Kate Legge
The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
The Miles Franklin Award is awarded annually for “the novel of the year which is of the highest literary merit and which presents Australian life in any of its phases.”
This year’s shortlist will be announced on Thursday, 19th of April, with the winner being revealed on Thursday 21st June.