Congratulations to Australian writer and Wiradjuri author Tara June Winch who was named winner of the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award for her novel The Yield earlier today.
The $60,000 annual prize is designed to recognise a novel of “the highest literary merit” that presents “Australian life in any of its phases”. Winch is the second indigenous writer in a row to win the award, following last year’s winner Melissa Lucashenko for Too Much Lip.
This how the chair of the judging panel, Richard Neville, described the winning book:
“In English ‘yield’ signifies what one takes from the land. In Wiradjuri it is ‘the things you give to, the movement, the space between things: baayanha.’ The Yield explores the legacies of colonial violence, shame, intergenerational trauma and environmental destruction. Winch celebrates and amplifies the contemporary resurgence and relevance of the Wiradjuri language. The Yield, a story of pain, loss, resilience and hope, is a novel where the past is the present is the future.”
Typically, I haven’t read The Yield, although I bought it not long after publication last year. I started it on the weekend and from the first couple of pages I just knew I was going to love it. The prose style, the ideas and themes, and the structure all appeal to me. Stay tuned for a review coming soon.
You can read more about today’s announcement on the official website.
And you can see a list of the shortlisted titles I have read here.
Reading Matters 
Yay! I haven’t read it but I’ve met her and she was lovely 🤣
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I hope she does what she said she was going to do and not leave it so long between books!
Did you know that as the recipient of the international Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Award in 2008-2009, she has been mentored by Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka?
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Brilliant!
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