2010 PMLA winners, shortlist and judges
The winners, shortlistees and judges of the 2010 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.
Judges 2010
Fiction panel
Professor Peter Pierce (Chair)
Professor John A Hay AC
Dr Lyn Gallacher
Nonfiction panel
Mr Brian Johns AO (Chair)
Mr Colin Steele
Dr Faye Sutherland
Children’s and young adult literature panel
Dr Robyn Sheahan-Bright (Chair)
Ms Mary-Ruth Mendel
Mr Mike Shuttleworth
Fiction
WINNER: Dog Boy – Eva Hornung
Dog Boy
WINNER
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: The Text Publishing Company
Abandoned in a big city at the onset of winter, a hungry four-year-old boy follows a stray dog to her lair. There in the rich smelly darkness, in the rub of hair, claws and teeth, he joins four puppies suckling at their mother’s teats. And so begins Romochka’s life as a dog. Weak and hairless, with his useless nose and blunt little teeth, Romochka is ashamed of what a poor dog he makes. But learning how to be something else…that’s a skill a human can master. Fortunately—because one day Romochka will have to learn how to be a boy.
About the author
Eva Hornung
Eva Hornung was born in Bendigo and now lives in rural South Australia.
Formerly published as Eva Sallis, Hornung is an award-winning writer of literary fiction and criticism: her first novel Hiam won the Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1997 and the Nita May Dobbie Award in 1999. The Marsh Birds won the Asher Literary Award 2005 and was shortlisted for numerous awards including the Age Book of the Year 2005, NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
Eva Hornung’s highly acclaimed Dog Boy was shortlisted for numerous prizes and won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2010.
Judges’ comments
To the ancient folkloric and literary traditions of children lost, then raised and nurtured in the animal world, Eva Hornung brings her own compassionate and contemporary outrage at the treatment of refugees and outcasts.
Dog Boy is a testing but triumphant feat of the imagination. Hornung challenges us to believe that an abandoned child in a decaying city in deep winter can sympathetically enter the small, embattled but protective society of a dog pack.
The resonances of the novel are bleak and unsettling, but the resolution is both shocking and apt, the experiment and the manner of its telling have a compelling assurance. The winner of the 2010 Fiction Awards is a remarkable work of international standing.
The Book of Emmett – Deborah Forster
The Book of Emmett
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: Penguin Random House
A stunning first novel from a Melbourne author. The story of the Brown family will wrench at your heart and make you hug those you love ever tighter.
Emmett Brown is as dark as Heathcliff, and as unpredictable. Sometimes he's an inspiration, but not often. He's a man of booze and obsessions: one of them is his 'System', an attempt to bend the laws of probability. But when the lottery numbers and horses fail him, so do love and reason, and he becomes an ogre to his wife and children. For the innocents – Louisa, Rob, Peter, Daniel and Jessie – the bonds formed hiding in hedges at the end of the street, waiting for the maelstroms to pass, are complex and unbreakable.
Over the years, the consequences of Emmett's rages shape both their spirits and psyches, but as he lies dying they discover that love – however imperfect – is the best defence against pain.
The Book of Emmett is a novel about hope and love and surviving.
About the author
Deborah Forster
Deborah Forster grew up in Footscray, Melbourne. She worked as a staff and freelance journalist for many years and was a This Life columnist on The Age and The Sunday Age.
Deborah Foster is married to Alan Kohler and they have three children. Her novels include the Miles Franklin shortlisted The Book of Emmett and The Meaning of Grace, shortlisted for The Age Fiction Book of the Year.
Ransom – David Malouf
Ransom
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: Penguin Random House
Malouf's fable engraves the epic themes of the Trojan war onto a perfect miniature.
David Malouf shines new light on Homer’s Iliad, adding twists and reflections, as well as flashes of earthy humour, to surprise and enchant. In this exquisite gem of a novel, Achilles is maddened by grief at the death of his friend Patroclus. From the walls of Troy, King Priam watches the body of his son, Hector, being dragged behind Achilles’ chariot. There must be a way, he thinks, of reclaiming the body – of pitting compromise against heroics, new ways against the old, and of forcing the hand of fate. Dressed simply and in a cart pulled by a mule, an old man sets off for the Greek camp . . .
Lyrical, immediate and heartbreaking, Malouf’s fable engraves the epic themes of the Trojan war onto a perfect miniature – themes of war and heroics, hubris and humanity, chance and fate, the bonds between soldiers, fathers and sons, all newly burnished and brilliantly recast for our times.
About the author
David Malouf
David Malouf is the internationally acclaimed author of novels including Ransom, The Great World (winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ prize and the Prix Femina Etranger), Remembering Babylon (winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), An Imaginary Life, Conversations at Curlow Creek, Dream Stuff, Every Move You Make and his autobiographical classic 12 Edmondstone Street.
His Collected Stories won the 2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award. His most recent books are A First Place, The Writing Life and Being There.
He was born in 1934 and was brought up in Brisbane.
Summertime – J.M. Coetzee
Summertime
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: Penguin Random House
A rich, funny, and deeply affecting autobiographical novel from one of the world's greatest living writers.
A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on the years from 1972–1977 when Coetzee, in his thirties, is sharing a run-down cottage in the suburbs of Cape Town with his widowed father. This, the biographer senses, is the period when he was 'finding his feet as a writer'.
Never having met Coetzee, he embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to him – a married woman with whom he had an affair, his favourite cousin Margot, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter had English lessons with him, former friends and colleagues. From their testimony emerges a portrait of the young Coetzee as an awkward, bookish individual with little talent for opening himself to others.
Within the family he is regarded as an outsider, someone who tried to flee the tribe and has now returned, chastened. His insistence on doing manual work, his long hair and beard, rumours that he writes poetry evoke nothing but suspicion in the South Africa of the time.
About the author
J.M. Coetzee
J.M. Coetzee's work includes Waiting For the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood, Youth, Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.
The Lakewoman – Alan Gould
The Lakewoman
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: Australian Scholarly Publishing (Arcadia)
A moving love story that is also a deeply absorbing poetic meditation on the moral journey of a solitary man. A brilliant achievement. - Alex Miller
An Australian soldier in British service parachutes into the roaring embattled skies of the night before D-Day, and lands in a vast lake of flooded fields. His encounter with a mysterious woman who seems to rule that water world deflects him from the war and from all the promise his life had seemed to hold. This is a strange and compelling novel.
About the author
Alan Gould
Alan Gould is a poet, novelist and essayist. His recent publications include The Past Completes Me – Selected Poems 1973–2003, his novel The Schoonermaster’s Dance (2000) and a collection of essays, The Totem Ship (1996).
He has won the Grace Leven Prize for poetry (2006), the 1999 Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for Literature, the 1992 National Book Council Banjo Award for fiction and was co-winner of the 2001 Courier-Mail, Book Of The Year Award for The Schoonermaster’s Dance.
As the Earth Turns Silver – Alison Wong
As the Earth Turns Silver
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: Pan McMillan
It is 1905 and brothers Yung and Shun eke out a living as green grocers near Wellington's bustling Chinatown. The pair work to support their families back in China, but know they must adapt if they are to survive and prosper in their adopted home.
Nearby, Katherine McKechnie struggles to raise her rebellious son and daughter following the death of her husband Donald. A strident right-wing newspaperman, Donald terrorised his family, though was idolised by his son.
Chancing upon Yung's grocery store one day, Katherine is touched by the Chinaman's unexpected generosity. In time, a clandestine relationship develops between the immigrant and the widow, a relationship Katherine's son Robbie cannot abide...
As World War I rolls on, and young men are swept up on a tide of macho patriotism, Robbie takes his family's honour into his own hands. In doing so, he places his mother at the heart of a tragedy that will affect everyone and everything she holds dear. Powerful, moving and unforgettable, As the Earth Turns Silver announces the arrival of a bold new voice in contemporary fiction.
About the author
Alison Wong
Alison Wong was born and raised in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, after her great grandparents on both sides migrated from China's Guangdong province in the 1890s. She studied mathematics at Victoria University in Wellington, worked in IT, and spent several years in China.
In 1996 she held a Reader's Digest NZ Society of Authors Fellowship in the Stout Research Centre, and in 2002 the Robert Burns Fellowship at Otago University. Her poetry collection, Cup, was shortlisted for the Best First Book for Poetry at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards and her poetry was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2006 and 2007.
As the Earth Turns Silver, her first novel, was published internationally in 2009. It was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister's Award and won the NZ Post Book Award for Fiction.
Alison lives with her family in Geelong.
Lovesong – Alex Miller
Lovesong
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: Allen & Unwin
Strangers did not, as a rule, find their way to Chez Dom, a small Tunisian cafe in Paris. Run by the widow Houria and her young niece, Sabiha, the cafe offers a home away from home for the North African immigrant workers at the great abattoirs of Vaugirard who, as with Houria and Sabiha themselves, have grown used to the smell of blood in the air. When one day a lost Australian tourist, John Patterner, seeks shelter in the cafe from a sudden Parisian rainstorm, a tragic love story begins to unfold.
Years later, while living a quiet life in suburban Melbourne, John Patterner is haunted by what happened to him and Sabiha at Vaugirard. He confides his story to Ken, an ageing writer, who sees in John's account the possibility for one last simple love story. When Ken tells his daughter this she reminds him, 'Love is never simple, Dad. You should know that.' He does know it. But being the writer he is, he cannot resist the lure of the story.
About the author
Alex Miller
Alex Miller is twice winner of The Miles Franklin Literary Award, first in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and again in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He is also an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, in 1993 for The Ancestor Game.
His fifth novel, Conditions of Faith, won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the 2001 New South Wales Premier's Awards.
In 2011 he won this award a second time with his novel Lovesong. Lovesong also won the People's Choice Award in the NSW Premier's Awards, the Age Book of the Year Award and the Age Fiction Prize for 2011.
In 2007 Landscape of Farewell was published to wide critical acclaim and in 2008 won the Chinese Annual Foreign Novels 21st Century Award for Best Novel and the Manning Clark Medal for an outstanding contribution to Australian cultural life. It was also short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, the ALS Gold Medal and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Non-fiction
WINNER: The Colony: A History of Early Sydney – Grace Karskens
The Colony: A History of Early Sydney
WINNER
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Non-fiction
Published by: Allen & Unwin
The Colony is the story of the marvellously contrary, endlessly energetic early years of Sydney. It is an intimate account of the transformation of a campsite in a beautiful cove to the town that later became Australia's largest and best-known city.
From the sparkling beaches to the foothills of the Blue Mountains, Grace Karskens skilfully reveals how landscape shaped the lives of the original Aboriginal inhabitants and newcomers alike.
She traces the ways in which relationships between the colonial authorities and ordinary men and women broke with old patterns, and the ways that settler and Aboriginal histories became entwined.
She uncovers the ties between the burgeoning township and its rural hinterland expanding along the river systems of the Cumberland Plain.
About the author
Grace Karskens
Grace Karskens teaches Australian History at the University of New South Wales and is the author of The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney.
Judges’ comments
The Colony is a marvellous story grounded in the landscape—from pre-history to successive transformations of the colony from campsites to towns, from garden plots to huge land-holdings.
Tracing and exploring the sense of place is the backbone of Karskens' narrative. Always present in Karskens' story is the Indigenous population, a dynamic, pervasive presence, a presence with victories as well as defeats, of shapers as well as of the dispossessed.
Karskens' scholarship is rich in the exploration of what she lovingly calls ‘the city of words’ – the work of fellow historians, archaeologists, geologists, museologists, and art and architectural historians. Karskens' own voice is a confident one, balanced, perceptive and startling in its simplicity and directness as she challenges received wisdom.
The Colony deserved this year's award for its high literary quality and originality. As a fine history, it is a story which also informs the present and gives us signposts for the future. The narrative is enthralling in its detail and exciting in the picture it draws of the great, brave achievement that the colony was from its earliest days.
The Life and Death of Democracy – John Keane
The Life and Death of Democracy
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Non-fiction
Published by: Simon & Schuster
The Life and Death of Democracy will inspire and shock its readers. Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: how did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world's democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to melt away, along with our polar ice caps?
Stylishly written, this superb book confronts its readers with an entirely fresh and irreverent look at the past, present and future of democracy.
About the author
John Keane
John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and the founder of the first Centre for the Study of Democracy in London.
Among his books are Democracy and Society (1988); Tom Paine: A Political Life (1995); and Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts (1999). More recently he has written Democracy and Media Decadence (2013).
Since being shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards his book The Life and Death of Democracy has been translated into Portuguese, Greek, Brazilian, Chinese and Japanese.
John Keane wrote the timeline for the new Museum of Australian Democracy and served as a member of the American-based Institutions of Democracy Commission.
Strange Places: A Memoir of Mental Illness – Will Elliott
Strange Places: A Memoir of Mental Illness
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Non-fiction
Published by: Harper Collins (ABC Books)
A darkly humorous, insightful and searingly honest first-hand account of a journey through schizophrenia from a prodigiously talented writer.
In 2006 Will Elliott had his first novel The Pilo Family Circus published. It won five literary awards and great acclaim, nationally and internationally. What nobody knew was that the young author of that work of terrifying fantasy had recently recovered from a psychotic episode and been diagnosed as schizophrenic.
Strange Places takes us on a journey through psychosis and out the other side, documenting the delusions, the drugs and the insights that recovery brings.
A beautifully written memoir of a harrowing - and enlightening - time, from one of Australia's best young writers.
About the author
Will Elliott
Will Elliott is the author of The Pilo Family Circus (ABC Books, 2006), which won five literary wards including the Golden Aurealis. He was named as one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelists.
His novel has been published in the UK, US, Germany, Italy and Sweden.
Will also writes book reviews for the Sydney Morning Herald.
The Water Dreamers – Michael Cathcart
The Water Dreamers
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Non-fiction
Published by: The Text Publishing Company
The Water Dreamers is an illuminating account of the ways people have imagined and interpreted Australia while struggling to understand this continent and striving to conquer its obstacles. It’s an environmental history and a cultural history with an unmistakable sense of how, today, we are part of that continuing story.
About the author
Michael Cathcart
Michael Cathcart was born in Melbourne in 1956—the year that television came to Australia. He was educated at Melbourne Grammar, the University of Melbourne, ANU and a tyre factory in Port Melbourne. He has worked as a schoolteacher, university lecturer and theatre director.
Cathcart is currently the presenter of Radio National’s ‘Books & Arts’ program and he has also presented ‘Arts Today’ and the ‘Radio National Quiz’.
The Blue Plateau: A Landscape Memoir – Mark Tredinnick
The Blue Plateau: A Landscape Memoir
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Non-fiction
Published by: University of Queensland Press
'A truly beautiful book, exquisite as the country it depicts' PATRICE NEWELL, author of Ten Thousand Acres
An inspired meditation on the contours of the land and its people, of time and place and family, the rhythms of nature and the rhythms of friendship, it is a book of many belongings. Here you will meet the plateau's first people; you will meet Les and Henryk and Jim; you will walk the Kedumba and the Kanimbla in drought and fire and flood.
Evocative and deeply moving, The Blue Plateau is a poet's story of an astonishing place and a loving portrait of home.
About the author
Mark Tredinnick
Mark Tredinnick wrote the best-selling writing guides The Little Red Writing Book (2006) and The Little Green Grammar Book (2008). His other books include A Place on Earth (2003) and The Land’s Wild Music (2005). His awards include the Newcastle Poetry Prize, the Blake Poetry Prize and the Calibre Essay Prize.
His work has appeared in Australian Book Review, Best Australian Essays, Island, Southerly, The Australian, The Bulletin, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other newspapers, journals and anthologies in Australia, the UK and the US.
The Ghost at the Wedding – Shirley Walker
The Ghost at the Wedding
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Non-fiction
Published by: Penguin Random House (Viking)
The young men who worked in the cane fields of northern New south Wales in 1914 couldn’t wait to set off for the adventure of war. The women coped as best they could, raised the children and lived in fear of an official telegram. They grieved for those killed, and learnt of worse things than death in combat.
The Ghost of the Wedding chronicles events from both sides of war: the horror of the battlefields and the women left at home. Walker’s depictions of those are grittily accurate, their reverberations haunting.
About the author
Shirley Walker
After a long career as a lecturer in Australian literature at the University of New England, Shirley Walker is now an Honorary Fellow at the institution.
She is a past President of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, the Founding Director of the Centre for Australian Language and Literature Studies at University of New Englan, and the author of four books and numerous critical articles.
She now lives on the far north coast of New South Wales, between the escarpment and the sea.
Children's literature
WINNER: Star Jumps – Lorraine Marwood
Star Jumps
WINNER
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Children's literature
Published by: Walker Books
A poignant verse novel depicting the joys and heartbreaks of a farming family as they struggle to cope with the devastating effects of long term drought.
Told through the eyes of Ruby, day to day farm life involves playing in grassy paddocks with siblings, doing jobs and helping out, and witnessing birth, death and sacrifice.
The family are devastated when they have to sell off some of their herd, but in the spirit of hope it is Ruby who tries in her own small way to help the family by making miniature bales of hay.
About the author
Lorraine Marwood
Lorraine Marwood is an award-winning poet who has been widely published in international literary magazines and has also published several children's books, including The Girl who Turned into Treacle and Rot Your Socks.
Lorraine is the Australian editor of the UK literary magazine Tears in the Fence and is a writer of poetry ideas and teaching plans for Literature Base. She also conducts workshops on poetry and story writing skills and is a judge for many writing competitions, including the Dorothea McKellar Poetry Awards.
Lorraine was also the recipient of a May Gibbs mentorship in
Judges’ comments
Lorraine Marwood's Star Jumps is a verse novel set on a dairy farm, and is a lyrical portrait of rural life seen vividly through the eyes of Ruby, the youngest of three siblings. Star Jumps is the favourite game of Keely, Connor and Ruby, a game they play among the marshmallow weed when their work is done; and is also a metaphor for the joy of life, for the here and now.
As prolonged drought threatens to take the farm and Dad has to sell many of the best stock, Ruby makes a list of the things they can do to help and comes up with mini hay bales made from the grass around the fences. Ruby tells the family's story in a voice which offers us a child's view of a changing world.
This is a moving evocation of home and family bonds, and the rhythms of farm life, and explores the effect of drought on all of these things. Star Jumps speaks with a natural poetry and unfussy richness, offering the reader evidence of the power of individual action and of hope in a small, perfectly inscribed way.
Star Jumps was selected as the winner of the 2010 Children's Fiction Award for it is a deceptively simple work with enormous resonance which, in the verse novel format, both evokes a place with warmth and great empathy, and enters into the world of the child with lucid charm and clarity. Star Jumps takes the reader into the lives of a family at a moment of change, sharing with the reader joy, fear and hope. It was the ‘surprise package’ in the list and the voice in which it is written is appealing, authentic and irresistible.
Running with the Horses – Alison Lester
Running with the Horses
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Children's literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
Ten-year-old Nina lives with her father above the palace stables at the Royal Academy of Dancing Horses. She loves watching the famous white stallions as they parade for the crowds, but her favourite horse is an ordinary mare called Zelda—an old cab horse Nina often pats on her way home from school. When Nina's world changes dramatically, she and her father have to flee from the city. Their journey over the mountains with Zelda and the stallions seems impossible, with danger at every turn . . .
About the author
Alison Lester
Alison Lester (Australian Children's Laureate, 2012-2013) is one of Australia's most popular and bestselling creators of children's books.
She has won many awards, including the 2005 Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Picture Book of the Year Award, and the 2012 CBCA Eve Pownall Award.
Her picture books include Running with the Horses, One Small Island, Kissed by the Moon and My Dog Bigsy—to name just a few.
Alison lives on a farm in the Victorian countryside. She spends part of each year travelling to schools around Australia, helping students and teachers develop their own stories.
Harry and Hopper – Margaret Wild
Harry and Hopper
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Children's literature
Published by: Scholastic
Harry and his dog Hopper have done everything together, ever since Hopper was a jumpy little puppy.
But one day the unthinkable happens. When Harry comes home from school, Hopper isn’t there to greet him. Hopper will never bet there again, but Harry is not ready to let him go.
This story tenderly demonstrates the shock of grief and the sustaining power of love.
About the author
Margaret Wild
Margaret Wild is one of Australia's leading authors of children's books. Her many award-winning titles include Toby, Our Granny, Miss Lily's Fabulous Pink Feather Boa, and Woolvs in the Sitee.
About the illustrator
Freya Blackwood
Freya Blackwood completed a Bachelor of Design (Visual Communications) at the University of Technology, Sydney, focusing on film and animation.
After making two short films, she worked in the film industry in Sydney and then in New Zealand on the film adaptation of Tolkiens' The Lord of the Rings.
Her first book illustration project was John Heffernan's Two Summers.
Since then she has illustrated many other award-winning picture books.
Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children – Jen Storer
Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Children's literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
Dumped in the River Charon, hunted by an accursed river creature and betrayed by the wicked Matron Pluckrose, Tensy Farlow is in mortal danger. She has no parents. Worse still, she has no guardian angel.
When she is thrown into the Home for Mislaid Children—a gloomy orphanage where ravens attack, Watchers hover over your bed, and even the angels cannot be trusted—it seems that all hope is lost.
Yet could it be that a plucky, flame-haired orphan with a mysterious past is precisely what this dark world needs?
About the author
Jen Storer
Jen Storer has worked behind the scenes in publishing as an editor, a project manager and in creative development. She is now a full-time writer for young people.
Her gothic fantasy novel, Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children, was shortlisted for a string of awards including the Prime Minister's Literary Awards (Best Children's Fiction) and the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year. Her books include the classic fantasy Accidental Princess and the Crystal Bay series.
Jen lives and works in Melbourne.
Cicada Summer – Kate Constable
Cicada Summer
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Children's literature
Published by: Allen & Unwin
When Eloise's get-rich-quick dad moves them back to his home town to turn the derelict family mansion into a convention centre, Eloise feels an immediate bond with the old house. She begins spending all her time there, ignoring her strange grandmother and avoiding the friendly boy next door.
Then Eloise meets a 'ghost girl' who may or may not be from the house's past, and events take a strange—and ultimately dangerous—turn.
Beautifully written, poignant and gripping, this is a charming and atmospheric story of personal growth, overcoming grief and the true nature of friendship and family.
About the author
Kate Constable
Kate Constable was born in Victoria but spent much of her childhood in Papua New Guinea, without television but within reach of a library where she 'inhaled' stories.
She studied Arts/Law at Melbourne University before working part-time for a record company while she began her life as a writer. Her novels, The Singer of All Songs, The Waterless Sea and The Tenth Power form the internationally acclaimed Chanters of Tremaris series. The Taste of Lightning is a stand-alone fantasy novel set in the same world.
Always Mackenzie is a teen novel published in the Girlfriend Fiction series.
Kate lives in West Preston, Victoria, with her husband and two daughters.
The Terrible Plop – Ursula Dubosarsky, Illustrator: Andrew Joyner
The Terrible Plop
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Children's literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
Here is the story of the Terrible PLOP, with a bear and a rabbit, and a hop hop hop.
But what is the PLOP? And where does it hide?
About the author
Ursula Dubosarsky
Ursula Dubosarsky is widely regarded as one of the most talented and original writers in Australia today. She is the author of over 40 books for children and young adults, which have won a number of national prizes.
Alongside her fiction for older children, Ursula has written picture books such as the highly popular The Terrible Plop and Too Many Elephants in This House, which have both been adapted as successful stage productions, and the non-fiction Word Spy books about the English language, which have also won major national awards.
Ursula has a PhD in English literature from Macquarie University.
About the illustrator
Andrew Joyner
Andrew Joyner is an internationally published illustrator and author.
His books include The Terrible Plop, written by Ursula Dubosarsky (shortlisted for the CBCA awards and the Prime Minister's Literary Awards), and the Boris series. Boris Gets a Lizard was shortlisted for the Speech Pathology Awards and Ready, Set, Boris was a Notable book in the CBCA Awards.
Recent Boris books include Boris on Show and Slow Down Boris. His picture books include Too Many Elephants in this House (with Ursula Dubosarsky), How Big is Too Small (with Jane Godwin) and Blue the Builder's Dog (with Jen Storer).
He lives in Strathalbyn, South Australia.
Young adult literature
WINNER: Confessions of a Liar, Thief and Failed Sex God – Bill Condon
Confessions of a Liar, Thief and Failed Sex God
WINNER
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
Winner
It’s 1967. The world is rocking, and Neil is growing up fast.
Neil Bridges attends a Catholic boys’ school in which teachers rule with iron fists and thick leather straps. Some crumble under the pressure but Neil toughs it out, just as his Vietnam-bound older brother has done before him. He has to be a man, after all. But at sixteen, how can he be sure of himself when he’s not sure of anything else? He loses a friend and finds another, falls in love and unwittingly treads a path that leads to revenge and possibly murder . . .
About the author
Bill Condon
Bill Condon's novels have been Honour Books in the Children's Book Council Book of the Year Awards, shortlisted for the Ethel Turner Prize in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, on the longlist in the inaugural Inky Awards, Australia's first teenage choice awards, and Confessions of a Liar, Thief and Failed Sex God won the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Young Adult.
He lives on the south coast of New South Wales with his wife, the well-known children's author Di (Dianne) Bates.
Judges’ comments
Confessions of a Liar, Thief and Failed Sex God is a poignant, funny and deeply insightful rite of passage novel. Set in 1967, the author makes it seem contemporary, skilfully employing a nuanced first-person narration.
Neil Bridges attends a Catholic boys' school where classmate Ray (Zom) is accused by a Brother of stealing a wallet and is expelled after a fight with his accuser. Neil knows who stole the wallet, but refuses to tell. Ray's father is so ashamed that Ray is cut off from his family—save for his older sister Sylvana.
Neil falls in love with Sylvana, but, implicated in Ray's disgrace, his loyalties and motives are deeply conflicted. The pain of first love, and the morality attached to individual life choices, is evoked with real empathy.
Confessions of a Liar, Thief and Failed Sex God also portrays the strength of ordinary families and the love even between warring brothers. There's a poignant hint too, of more loss ahead, in Neil's brother Kevin's conscription for the Vietnam War. Condon declines to indulge in historical revisionism, while the economical prose attains a rhythm that is almost poetry.
The short, chiselled chapters ensure that not a word is wasted. Condon is a writer of considerable craft who eschews the flamboyant in search of deeper truths.
The winner of the 2010 Young Adult Fiction Award is a work of tremendous honesty and integrity, exploring moral issues pertaining to the rite of passage experienced by teenagers. Judges were enormously impressed with the way the writer canvasses these concerns in a concise, emotionally charged novel.
Stolen: A Letter to My Captor – Lucy Christopher
Stolen: A Letter to My Captor
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Chicken House
In a moving letter to her captor, sixteen-year-old Gemma relives her kidnapping from Bangkok airport while on holiday. Taken by Ty, her troubled young stalker, to the wild and desolate Australian outback, she reflects on a landscape from which there’s no escape.
In a story of survival, passion and darkness, Gemma reveals how she had to deal with the nightmare, or die trying to fight it.
About the author
Lucy Christopher
Lucy grew up in Australia, but now lives in Cardiff. She is the winner of the Branford Boase Award (UK), a Printz Honor Award (USA), and has been shortlisted for the COSTA Award, the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the Prime Minister's Literary Awards (Australia) twice.
Beatle Meets Destiny – Gabrielle Williams
Beatle Meets Destiny
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
Imagine your name is John Lennon, only everyone calls you Beatle.
And then you meet your Dream girl and her name is Destiny McCartney.
But what if you're already with the perfect girl?
A novel about change, chance and everybody doing the wrong thing.
About the author
Gabrielle Williams
Gabrielle Williams has worked in recording studios, advertising and television.
Her first novel for young adults, Beatle Meets Destiny, was shortlisted for two literary awards in 2010.
Gabrielle lives in Melbourne with her husband and three children.
The Winds of Heaven – Judith Clarke
The Winds of Heaven
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Allen & Unwin
When Fan was little she dreamed of magical countries in the far away blue hills. As she grew up she dreamed of love, and the boys came after her one by one by one.
Clementine thought her cousin Fan's house in the country had a special smell: of sun and dust and kerosene and the wild honey they ate for breakfast on their toast. But then there were the feelings: the anger that smelled like iron and the disappointment that smelled like mud.
Fan was strong and beautiful and Clementine thought she'd always be like that. But Fan was seeking something, and neither she nor Clementine knew exactly what.
With sharp poetic prose, insight and compassion, Judith Clarke tells a moving and beautiful story as she traces the lives of two young women, separated by circumstance, but linked forever by blood and friendship.
About the author
Judith Clarke
When Fan was little she dreamed of magical countries in the far away blue hills. As she grew up she dreamed of love, and the boys came after her one by one by one.
Clementine thought her cousin Fan's house in the country had a special smell: of sun and dust and kerosene and the wild honey they ate for breakfast on their toast. But then there were the feelings: the anger that smelled like iron and the disappointment that smelled like mud.
Fan was strong and beautiful and Clementine thought she'd always be like that. But Fan was seeking something, and neither she nor Clementine knew exactly what.
With sharp poetic prose, insight and compassion, Judith Clarke tells a moving and beautiful story as she traces the lives of two young women, separated by circumstance, but linked forever by blood and friendship.
The Museum of Mary Child – Cassandra Golds
The Museum of Mary Child
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
Heloise lives with her godmother in an isolated cottage. Next door is a sinister museum dedicated to the memory of Mary Child.
Visitors enter it with a smile and depart with fear in their eyes. One day, Heloise finds a doll under the floorboards. Against her godmother's wishes, she keeps it. And that's when the delicate truce between Heloise and her godmother begins to unravel . . . Heloise runs away.
She journeys far, but one day she must return to uncover the secret at the heart of her being.
About the author
Cassandra Golds
Cassandra Golds was born in Sydney and grew up reading Hans Christian Andersen, C.S. Lewis and Nicholas Stuart Gray over and over again.
Her first book was accepted for publication when she was nineteen years old. She also wrote a monthly cartoon serial, illustrated by Stephen Axelsen, for the NSW School Magazine.
She sings for a hobby, has owned a map of Narnia since she was ten, and would like to be an actor if she wasn't a writer – but only if she could be in a production of Hair or Godspell.
Swerve – Phillip Gwynne
Swerve
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
One of the country's finest young cellists, 16 year-old Hugh Twycross has a very bright future. A future that has been mapped out by his parents, his teachers, by everybody, it seems, except Hugh Twycross.
Hugh has a secret, though: he loves cars and he loves car racing. When his newly discovered grandfather, Poppy, asks him to go on a road trip to Uluru in his 1970 Holden HT Monaro, Hugh decides, for once in his life, to do the unexpected.
But Poppy has a secret that will unravel both their lives and take them in a direction they never expected.
About the author
Phillip Gwynne
Phillip Gwynne's first novel Deadly Unna?, the literary hit of 1998, has now sold over 180,000 copies. It was made into the feature film Australian Rules for which Phillip won an AFI award. The sequel, Nukkin Ya, was published to great acclaim in 2000.
For the Aussie Bites series, he wrote The Worst Team Ever, Born to Bake, and A Chook Called Harry.
Independent novels include Jetty Rats and Swerve (which was shortlisted for many awards amongst them the 2010 Prime Minister's Award and the Golden Inky).
Phillip is also the author of Michael in the Stuff Happens series.
Jarvis 24 – David Metzenthen
Jarvis 24
Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
So far, Marc E. Jarvis has lost a white football boot, a school tie and a best friend. But there's more in store for him when he completes Work Experience at a local car yard – where his world is truly rocked, shocked and shaken. Then Marc meets Electra. And nothing will ever be the same again . . .
A story of true friends, crazed coaches, shooting stars, and loves lost and found.
About the author
David Metzenthen
David Metzenthen lives with his wife and two children in Melbourne and is one of Australia's top writers for young people.
He has received many awards for excellence, including many CBCA Book of the Year Awards: Older Readers recognitions, a Victorian Premier's Literary Award, a Queensland Premier's Literary Award and a NSW Premier's Literary Award.
Jarvis 24 won the CBCA Award for Book of the Year: Older Readers in 2010, as well as being shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award, WA Premier's Literary Award, Inky Awards and SA Festival Awards for Literature.
