Category: News

News

Deirdre Madden wins prestigious Windham-Campbell prize

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Congratulations to Northern Irish writer Deirdre Madden who has been awarded a prestigious Windham-Campbell prize, worth US$175,000! Eight of these awards have been handed out every year since 2013.

(Australia’s own Helen Garner received one in 2016, famously thinking it was a spam email and almost binning the news of her win.)

Madden is one of my favourite writers. In the words of the Windham-Campbell prize committee, she brings to “life the smallest movements of characters’ impulses and thoughts, portraying the intricacies of human lives with compassion and effortless depth”.

Madden’s stories show us how we are both bound and freed by the “unholy wind” of time. Her characters’ lives are intersected by extraordinary events: some political (the Troubles), some economic (the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger), some personal, all sudden openings that offer the rare opportunity for transformation and even transcendence. 

Windham-Campbell Prize announcement

I met her once at a Faber showcase when she was promoting Time Present and Time Past and she was so gracious and lovely. In those days I always handed out business cards to writers I met, never expecting anything to come of it, but a few days later she sent me an email, writing “you have a most impressive blog” — swoon. (And yes, I’ve still got that email.)

Her backlist is relatively small — eight novels at last count (she also writes children’s books) — of which I’ve read five:

📖 Hidden Symptoms (1986)
📖 The Birds of the Innocent Wood (1988)
📖 Remembering Light and Stone (1993)
📖 Nothing Is Black (1994)
📖 One by One in the Darkness (1996)
📖 Authenticity (2002)
📖 Molly Fox’s Birthday (2008)
📖 Time Present and Time Past (2013)

I hope this prize means she might have the means to pen another novel soon and that it might bring her work to the attention of a wider audience.

You can read more about the prize announcement in The Guardian and the Windham-Campbell Prize on the official website.

2023 Stella Prize, Literary prizes, News

2023 Stella Prize winner announced

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Congratulations to Sarah Holland-Batt on winning this year’s Stella Prize for her poetry collection The Jaguar, which I reviewed favourably here 

She takes home $60,000 thanks to the generous support of the Wilson Foundation.

According to the chair of the judging panel, Alice Pung, the author “writes about death as tenderly as we’ve ever read about birth”,  adding:

She focuses on the pedestrian details of hospitals and aged care facilities, enabling us to see these institutions as distinct universes teeming with life and love. Her imagery is unexpected and unforgettable, and often blended with humour. This is a book that cuts through to the core of what it means to descend into frailty, old age, and death. It unflinchingly observes the complex emotions of caring for loved ones, contending with our own mortality and above all – continuing to live.

You can read the full announcement, made tonight, on the Stella Prize website.

This is the second year in a row that a poetry collection has won. Last year that honour went to Evelyn Araluen’s debut collection of prose and poetry, Dropbear.

Book review, Literary prizes, News

2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award winner named

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Congratulations to Jennifer Down whose novel Bodies of Light has been named the winner of this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award.

I haven’t actually read the book myself but according to the blurb from the publisher, it sounds intriguing.

I didn’t really follow the award this year and only made a passing reference to the longlist in this post which I wrote at the end of May.

For the record, the titles on the shortlist were as follows:

  • The Other Half of You by Michael Mohammed Ahmad (Hachette Australia)
  • Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser (Allen & Unwin)
  •  Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down (Text Publishing)
  •  One Hundred Days by Alice Pung (Black Inc. Books)
  •  Grimmish by Michael Winkler (Puncher and Wattmann)

You can read more about the winner via this article published on The Guardian.

News

Perth bookstore launches First Nations book subscription

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How’s this for good timing?

No sooner do I decide to begin a Reading First Nations Writers project, than I discover an independent bookstore here in Perth is set to launch a First Nations book subscription!

Rabble Books & Games, in Maylands, will offer a book every month that will be “by an Indigenous author and from a range of genres for adults”.

Needless to say, I have signed up! I have opted for the postal subscription, which is $45 per month (via Direct Debit), but if you live locally you can choose the in-store collection subscription, which is $35.

If you sign up by 24th of March, you will receive the first book by the end of the month. The first book is one of the five on the Stella Prize longlist by First Nation writers, so you get to choose which one you’d like.

On social media, the store said:

We hope that book subscriptions will give us a bit of a soft landing in what we expect to be a difficult year for Rabble, whilst spreading the joy of our book curation every month, and continuing to build a little community of book lovers. Hopefully, we can keep holding each other close in a socially distanced way!

To find out more, check out the store’s subscription page.

Book chat, News

A literary cause to support: the ‘Freadom Inside’ project

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Image by Maaark from Pixabay

 

Imagine being stuck in prison with nothing to read. No opportunity to escape to a different world. No opportunity to better yourself.

This is obviously something that has crossed the mind of Australian writer Bri Lee (whose books I have reviewed here). Bri has set up the ‘Freadom Inside’ project, which is designed to provide women incarcerated in NSW jails the opportunity to read books that have been bought for them by the public. It is being backed by Independent bookseller Glee Books, in Sydney, which is covering the postage and dispatch of the books.

Writing on her Instagram account last week, Bri said: “What I found when researching #WhoGetsToBeSmart [her latest non-fiction book about power, privilege and education in Australia] was shocking, and I have chosen to commit to this work as one concrete way I can help share learning + resources instead of hoarding them.”

The project will be officially launched next week, on October 28, via Zoom. You can find out more and book tickets here.

In the meantime, if you would like to donate a book (or books) to the project, visit this page on the Glee Books website, choose from the preselected range (which has been approved by Corrective Services), purchase online using the “freadom” coupon code and Glee Books will cover the postage and dispatch. Find out more here.

As someone who has a TBR that spans two continents (!!), I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to exist without access to reading material. I tend to buy at least a couple of books, both new and used, per month, so I have put my money where my mouth is and ordered Tara June Winch’s Swallow the Air, a book I read last year and really loved, for the project.

[Hat tip: I first read about this literary project on Australian writer Charlotte Wood’s Instagram account.]

Literary prizes, News

Ned Kelly Award winners announced

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The winners of the 2021 Ned Kelly Awards for crime fiction and true crime writing have been announced.

Best Crime Fiction went to Consolation by Garry Disher. I am three-quarters of the way through this novel at the moment and it’s excellent, so expect a review soon.

Best Debut Crime Fiction went to The Second Son by Loraine Peck , which I read earlier in the year as part of my Southern Cross Crime Month.

Best True Crime went to Stalking Claremont: Inside the hunt for a serial killer by Bret Christian, which has been on my TBR since publication last year and which is another I hope to read soon seeing as it’s about an investigation that happened right here in Perth.

Best International Crime Fiction went to We Begin at the End by Chris Whittaker.

You can find out more about the awards and what the judges said about the prize winners via the announcement on the official website.

News

2021 Ned Kelly Awards shortlists announced

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Here’s some good news for fans of crime writing: the 2021 Ned Kelly Awards for crime fiction and true crime writing have been announced.

Established in 1995, these awards are administered by the Australian Crime Writers Association (ACWA) and are named after Australia’s infamous 19th century bushranger Ned Kelly.

The awards are split into four separate categories as follows (hyperlinks take you to my reviews):

BEST CRIME FICTION

  • Consolation by Garry Disher (Text) (on my TBR!)

  • Gathering Dark by Candice Fox (Penguin Random House)

  • A Testament of Character by Sulari Gentill (Pantera Press)

  • The Survivors by Jane Harper (Pan Macmillan)

  • The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan (Harper Collins) (on my TBR!)

  • Tell Me Lies by J.P. Pomare (Hachette) (on my TBR!)

  • When She Was Good by Michael Robotham (Hachette)

  • White Throat by Sarah Thornton (Text) (on my TBR!)

BEST DEBUT CRIME FICTION

  • The Good Mother by Rae Cairns (Bandrui Publishing)

  • The Second Son by Loraine Peck (Text)

  • The Bluffs by Kyle Perry (Penguin Random House) (abandoned this one)

  • The Night Whistler by Greg Woodland (Text)

BEST TRUE CRIME

  • The Husband Poisoner by Tanya Bretherton (Hachette)

  • Stalking Claremont: Inside the hunt for a serial killer by Bret Christian (Harper Collins) (on my TBR!)

  • Public Enemies by Mark Dapin (Allen and Unwin)

  • Hazelwood by Tom Doig (Penguin Random House)

  • Witness by Louise Milligan (Hachette)

BEST INTERNATIONAL CRIME FICTION

  • The Guest List by Lucy Foley (Harper Collins)

  • The Secrets of Strangers by Charity Norman (Allen and Unwin)

  • Take Me Apart by Sara Sligar (Text)

  • We Begin at the End by Chris Whittaker (Allen and Unwin)

  • Broken by Don Winslow (Harper Collins)

The winners will be announced at an award ceremony next month.

You can find out more about the Ned Kelly awards on the ACWA website. All previous category winners are listed on this Wikipedia page.