2011 PMLA winners, shortlist and judges
The winners, shortlistees and judges of the 2011 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.
Judges 2011
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
Children's literature
WINNER: Shake a leg – Boori Monty Pryor and Jan Ormerod
Shake a leg
WINNER
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Children's literature
Published by: Allen and Unwin
From pizza shop to bora ground, here is a joyous celebration of food, dance and cultural understanding.
When three young boys go to a pizza parlour and meet an Aboriginal chef who can speak Italian and make a deadly pizza, they're in for a surprise!
About the author
Boori Monty Pryor
Boori Monty Pryor was born in North Queensland. His father is from the Birrigubba of the Bowen region and his mother from Yarrabah (near Cairns), a descendant of the Kungganji. Boori is a multi-talented performer who has worked in film, television, modelling, sport, music and theatre. Boori has written several award-winning children's books with Meme McDonald including My Girragundji, The Binna Binna Man and Njunjul The Sun.
Boori Monty Pryor was Australia's Children's Laureate in 2012 and 2013.
About the author
Jan Ormerod
Jan Ormerod grew up in Western Australia, and as a child she was constantly drawing. After becoming a mother, Jan turned to children's book illustration. Her first book, Sunshine, won awards around the world. She has since had over 50 books published.
Flyaway – Lucy Christopher
Flyaway
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Children's literature
Published by: Chicken House
While visiting her father in hospital, 13 year-old Isla meets Harry, the first boy to understand her and her love of the outdoors. But Harry is ill, and as his health fails, Isla is determined to help him.
Together they watch a lone swan struggling to fly on the lake outside Harry's window. Isla believes that if she can help the swan, she can help Harry. And in doing so, she embarks upon a magical journey of her own...
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.
April Underhill, tooth fairy – Bob Graham
April Underhill, tooth fairy
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Children's literature
Published by: Walker Books
High in the sky above Parkville, tooth fairies April and Esme Underhill are on their way to collect their very first tooth. They've never collected a tooth before. Mum and Dad always do it. But tonight it's their turn. So, equipped with a bag, a coin and a mobile phone, the sisters head for Daniel Dangerfield's house, and a very unusual first tooth visit!
About the author
Bob Graham
Bob Graham is a Kate Greenaway-winning author-illustrator who has written and illustrated many acclaimed children's picture books including How to Heal a Broken Wing and How the Sun Got to Coco's House. His 2011 title, A Bus Called Heaven, is endorsed by Amnesty International UK and was the winner of the 2012 Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year Award—a prize Bob has won an unprecedented six times. In 2014, Silver Buttons was awarded a prestigious Prime Minister's Literary Award in Australia. Bob lives in Melbourne.
Now – Morris Gleitzman
Now
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Children's literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
Set in the current day, this is the final book in the series that began with Once, continued with Then and is . . . Now.
Felix is a grandfather. He has achieved much in his life and is widely admired. He has mostly buried the painful memories of his childhood, but they resurface when his granddaughter Zelda comes to stay with him. Together they face a cataclysmic event armed only with their with gusto and love—an event that helps them achieve salvation from the past, but also brings the possibility of destruction.
About the author
Morris Gleitzman
Morris Gleitzman grew up in England and came to Australia when he was sixteen. After university he worked for ten years as a screenwriter. Then he had a wonderful experience. He wrote a novel for young people. Now, after 36 books, he's one of Australia's most popular children's authors.
Why I love Australia – Bronwyn Bancroft
Why I love Australia
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Children's literature
Published by: Bronwyn Bancroft
Gorges that plummet into serpentine shadows...
Cloaks of white that drape the rocky crags of snowy mountains...
In this magnificent celebration of country, Bronwyn Bancroft uses both images and words to explore the awe-inspiring beauty of the Australian continent, and to express the depth of her feelings for it.
About the author
Bronwyn Bancroft
Bronwyn Bancroft is a Djanbun clan member of the Bundjalung Nation. In a career spanning over three decades, Bronwyn has participated in hundreds of exhibitions, solo and group, within Australia and overseas.
Bronwyn has worked as a volunteer at Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative for the last seven years as curator/business planner and senior strategist. Bronwyn currently holds Board positions with Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME), Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, Commonwealth Bank RAP Committee and Copyright Agency.
Brownyn has a Diploma of Visual Arts; two Masters degrees from the University of Sydney, and she is currently a Doctoral candidate at the University of Sydney.
Young adult literature
WINNER: Graffiti moon – Cath Crowley
Graffiti moon
WINNER
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Graffiti moon
An intense and exhilarating 24 hours in the lives of four teenagers on the verge: of adulthood, of HSC, of finding out just who they are, and who they want to be.
Lucy is in love with Shadow, a mysterious graffiti artist.
Ed thought he was in love with Lucy, until she broke his nose.
Dylan loves Daisy, but throwing eggs at her probably wasn't the best way to show it.
Jazz and Leo are slowly encircling each other.
About the author
Cath Crowley
Cath Crowley is a young adult author published in Australia and internationally. She is the author of The Gracie Faltrain trilogy, Chasing Charlie Duskin, and Graffiti Moon. In 2011, Graffiti Moon won the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction, the Ethel Turner Award for Young People's Literature, and was named an Honour Book in the Children's Book Council, Book of the Year. Cath lives in Ballarat, Victoria.
The three loves of Persimmon – Cassandra Golds
The three loves of Persimmon
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
Persimmon lives a solitary life, pouring her passion into the florist shop she owns in the underground railway station. Her only companion is Rose, a talking cabbage. Intriguing young men come and go but Persimmon has yet to find the love of her life.
Several levels beneath Persimmon's shop lives a mouse called Epiphany. Epiphany has a questing mind. She wants to know what lies beyond the dark tunnels of her home. As in all good fables, Persimmon and Epiphany are destined to meet. And when they do, life will never be the same again.
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.
The piper’s son – Melina Marchetta
The piper's son
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
Melina Marchetta is one of Australia's most successful writers of young-adult fiction and is a best-selling and critically acclaimed author in more than twenty countries and in eighteen languages. In 2009 Marchetta won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association for On the Jellicoe Road. Finnikin of the Rock, Book One of the Lumatere Chronicles,was first published in Australia in 2008, followed in 2010 by the companion novel to her award-winning book Saving Francesca, The Piper's Son, long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award and short-listed for many other literary awards in Australia and internationally.
About the author
Melina Marchetta
Melina Marchetta is one of Australia's most successful writers of young-adult fiction and is a best-selling and critically acclaimed author in more than twenty countries and in eighteen languages. In 2009 Marchetta won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association for On the Jellicoe Road. Finnikin of the Rock, Book One of the Lumatere Chronicles,was first published in Australia in 2008, followed in 2010 by the companion novel to her award-winning book Saving Francesca, The Piper's Son, long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award and short-listed for many other literary awards in Australia and internationally.
The good oil – Laura Buzo
The good oil
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Allen and Unwin
From the moment 15-year-old Amelia begins work on the checkout at Woolworths she is sunk, gone, lost.head-over-heels in love with Chris. Chris is the funny, charming man-about-Woolies, but he's 21, and the six-year difference in their ages may as well be 100. Chris and Amelia talk about everything from Second Wave Feminism to Great Expectations and Alien but will he ever look at her in the way she wants him to? And if he does, will it be everything she hopes?
About the author
Laura Buzo
Laura Buzo was born and grew up in Sydney, where she now lives with her daughter. The Good Oil was her first novel. Her second, Holier Than Thou was published in 2012.
About a girl – Joanne Horniman
About a girl
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Allen and Unwin
I remember when we lay together for the first time and I closed my eyes and felt the crackle of her dark hair between my fingers. She was all warmth and sparking light. When I was with her, my skin sighed that the centre of the world was precisely here. Anna is afraid she must be unlovable—until she meets Flynn. Together, the girls swim, eat banana cake, laugh and love. Some days Flynn is unreachable; other days she's at Anna's door—but when Anna discovers Flynn's secret, she wonders if she knows her at all. A beautifully crafted novel by award-winning author Joanne Horniman that explores the tension between the tender moments that pull people together and the secrets that push them apart.
About the author
Joanne Horniman
Joanne Horniman has spent most of her life in country New South Wales, apart from a few years in Sydney and some time travelling overseas. She has worked as an editor, teacher and artist—some of the posters she helped produce are in the print collection of the Australian National Gallery. She has written many books for children and teenagers, including My Candlelight Novel (2008), Secret Scribbled Notebooks (2004), winner of the 2005 Qld Premier's Literary Award and shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's and CBCA Awards. A Charm of Powerful Trouble (2002) was shortlisted for three Premier's Literary awards, and Mahalia (2001) was a CBC Honour book, and also shortlisted for numerous awards.
Fiction
WINNER: Traitor – Stephen Daisley
Traitor
WINNER
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: The Text Publishing Company
Stephen Daisley's astonishing debut novel is a story of war and of love—how each changes everything, forever. Traitor is that rarest of things: a work of fiction that will transport the reader, heart and soul, into another realm.
About the author
Stephen Daisley
Stephen Daisley was born in 1955 and grew up in the North Island of New Zealand. He has worked on sheep and cattle stations, on oil and gas construction sites and as a truck driver, among many other jobs. Stephen's first novel, Traitor, won the 2011 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction. He lives in Western Australia with his wife and five children.
When Colts Ran – Roger McDonald
When Colts Ran
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: Penguin Random House (Vintage)
In this sweeping epic of friendship, toil, hope and failed promise, multi-award-winning author Roger McDonald follows the story of Kingsley Colts as he chases the ghost of himself through the decades, and in and out of the lives and affections of the citizens of 'The Isabel', a slice of Australia scattered with prospectors, artists, no-hopers and visionaries. Against this spacious backdrop of sheep stations, timeless landscapes and the Five Alls pub, men play out their fates, conduct their rivalries and hope for the best.
Major Dunc Buckler, 'misplaced genius and authentic ratbag', scours the country for machinery in a World War that will never find him. Wayne Hovell, slave to 'moral duty', carries the physical and emotional scars of Colts's early rebellion, but also finds himself the keeper of his redemption. Normie Powell, son of a rugby-playing minister, finds his own mysticism as a naturalist, while warm-hearted stock dealer Alan Hooke longs for understanding in a house full of women. They are men shaped by the obligations and expectations of a previous generation, all striving to define themselves in their own language, on their own terms.
When Colts Ran, written in Roger McDonald's rich and piercingly observant style, in turns humorous and hard-bitten, charts the ebb and flow of human fortune, and our fraught desire to leave an indelible mark on society and those closest to us. It shows how loyalties shape us in the most unexpected ways. It is the story of how men 'strike at beauty' as they fall to the earth.
About the author
Roger McDonald
Roger McDonald was born in Young, New South Wales, and educated at country schools and in Sydney. He began his working life as a teacher, ABC producer, and book editor, wrote poetry for several years, but in his thirties turned to fiction, expressing the feeling that for him, at least, poetry was 'unable to express a full range of characters and moods, the larger panorama of Australian life that I felt was there to portray'. His first novel was 1915, a novel of Gallipoli, winner of the Age Book of the Year, and made into a highly successful eight-part ABC-TV mini-series (now on DVD).
Since 1980 McDonald has lived on farms (no farm animals except poultry and a corrugated iron sheep, these days) outside Braidwood, south-eastern New South Wales, with intervals spent in Sydney and New Zealand. His account of travelling the outback with a team of New Zealand shearers, Shearers' Motel, won the National Book Council Banjo Award for non-fiction. His bestselling novel Mr Darwin's Shooter was awarded the New South Wales, Victorian, and South Australian Premiers' Literary Awards, and the National Fiction Award at the 2000 Adelaide Writers' Week. The Ballad of Desmond Kale won the 2006 Miles Franklin Award and South Australian Festival Prize for Fiction. A long story that became part of When Colts Ran was awarded the O. Henry Prize (USA) in 2008.
Glissando: A Melodrama
Glissando: A Melodrama
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: Sleepers Publishing
When looking back over his life, Archie Fliess has got some understanding to do. So begins his sprawling reflection, from the day the fortunes of two brothers change when they're taken to be the rightful owners of their grandfather's property in country NSW. Archie becomes embroiled in the mystery surrounding his grandfather's life, as their two stories of disappointment and failed ambition unravel.
Glissando travels along many threads with a playful, philosophical voice in a style reminiscent of Sterne's Tristram Shandy and White's Voss. It has a burlesque bravado similar to Steve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole. It's an Australian classic, a satirical romp of epic proportions.
About the author
David Musgrave
David Musgrave is a poet, novelist, publisher and critic. His collection Anatomy of Voice, published in 2016, was awarded the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Poetry and his collection Phantom Limb was awarded the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry in 2011. Individual poems have won or been shortlisted for most of the poetry prizes in Australia. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle.
That deadman dance – Kim Scott
That deadman dance
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: Pan MacMillan (Picador)
Bobby Wabalanginy never learned fear, not until he was pretty well a grown man. Sure, he grew up doing the Dead Man Dance, but with him it was a dance of life, a lively dance for people to do together...
Told through the eyes of black and white, young and old, this is a story about a fledgling Western Australian community in the early 1800s known as the 'friendly frontier'.
Poetic, warm-hearted and bold, it is a story which shows that first contact did not have to lead to war.
It is a story for our times.
About the author
Kim Scott
Kim Scott grew up on the South Coast of Western Australia. As a descendant of those who first created human society along that edge of ocean, he is proud to be one among those who call themselves Noongar. He began writing for publication when he became a teacher of English and has had poetry and short stories published in a number of anthologies. His second novel, Benang: From the Heart, won the 1999 WA Premier's Book Award, the 2000 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the 2001 Kate Challis RAKA Award. That Deadman Dance, first published in 2010, won the 2011 Miles Franklin Award, the 2011 ALS Gold Medal, 2011 Victorian Premiers Prize for Literature, 2011 Victorian Premiers Prize for Fiction, 2011 Kate Challis RAKA Award, 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book—Regional Winner, the 2010 Western Australian Premier's Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for many others. Kim lives in Coolbellup, Western Australia, and is currently employed at the Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute, Curtin University.
Notorious – Roberta Lowing
Notorious
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Fiction
Published by: Allen & Unwin
A nameless woman lies horribly scarred and close to death in an Asylum deep in the North African desert.
As the wind calls up a deadly sandstorm, the inhabitants of the Asylum discover they are linked by a diary written by the poet Rimbaud, who in 1890 also confronted the implacable power of the desert. Over the next one hundred and twenty years, everyone who sees the diary will want it. Most will do anything to possess it.
Only the woman, whose dark past is entwined with those who would possess the diary at any cost, sees the true worth of the book. As she surrenders to the transformative power of the desert, only she understands how it exalts the secrets mapped on the diary's precious pages.
About the author
Roberta Lowing
Roberta Lowing was Fairfax Media/The Sun-Herald's film and video critic for twenty-three years and covered the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals for ten years, interviewing directors and actors and writing travel stories. In the late 1990s, she produced and directed 80 episodes of the environmental show Green Seen, which she co-founded, for the community television station Channel 31. From 2006 until 2010, she ran the PoetryUnLimitedPress Readings in Sydney. Roberta recently completed her Master of Letters at the University of Sydney. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals such as Meanjin, Blue Dog and Overland. Roberta's first collection of poetry, Ruin, was published in 2010 by Interactive Press. Fairfax Books has also published a collection of Roberta's reviews from the The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age.
Non-fiction
WINNER: The hard light of day: An artist’s story of friendships in Arrernte country – Rod Moss
The hard light of day: An artist's story of friendships in Arrernte country
WINNER
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Non-fiction
Published by: Scribe Publishing
A story of whitefella–blackfella friendship that offers hope for the future.
Two years after artist Rod Moss arrived in Alice Springs to teach painting, he met a married couple who had set up camp in the gully beside his flat. Over the next twenty-five years, his friendship with Xavier and Petrina Neil and the friendships that grew from it with the families of Whitegate, an Arrernte camp on the outskirts of town, would nourish and challenge Moss beyond his imagining.
The Hard Light of Day offers a rare insight into the reality of life in the Centre, from the contours of the MacDonnell Ranges and the textures and sounds of Arrernte culture, to the endemic violence, alcoholism and ill-health that continue to devastate Aboriginal lives. In recalling the relationships and experiences that have shaped his life and work in Alice Springs, Moss unsentimentally reveals the human face behind the statistics and celebrates the enriching, transformative power of friendship.
Illustrated with Moss's evocative paintings and photographs, The Hard Light of Day is an incredible journey into a world never shown in the mainstream media, and an artist's chronicle of the moments that have inspired him.
About the author
Rod Moss
Rod Moss grew up in Melbourne, heading to Alice Springs in 1984. The burnished colours of Central Australia and its Indigenous culture have informed his art ever since. His relationship with the Indigenous community is unique, based on decades of friendship and trust. In the timeframe of the book, many changes occurred in Rod's own life—marriage, birth of two children, divorce—but they sit in the background of the story as he focuses on the Aboriginal community, with their permission and participation.
Claude Levi-Strauss: the poet in the laboratory – Patrick Wilcken
Claude Levi-Strauss: the poet in the laboratory
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Non-fiction
Published by: Bloomsbury Publishing
Claude Lévi-Strauss was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. Dislodging Sartre, Camus and de Beauvoir from the pinnacle of French intellectual life in the 1950s, he brought about a sea change in Western thought and inspired a generation of thinkers and writers, including Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan with his structuralist theories. Tracing the evolution of his ideas through interviews with the man himself, research into his archives and conversations with contemporary anthropologists, Wilcken explores and explains Lévi-Strauss's theories, revealing an artiste manqué who infused his academic writing with an artistic and poetic sensibility.
About the author
Patrick Wilcken
Patrick Wilcken grew up in Sydney and studied at Goldsmiths College and the Institute of Latin American Studies in London. He has contributed Brazil-related reviews and features to the Times Literary Supplement and the Guardian. He is the author of Empire Adrift: He has spent lengthy periods in Rio de Janeiro and now lives in London with his wife and child.
Sydney – Delia Falconer
Sydney
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Non-fiction
Published by: NewSouth Publishing
Sydney has always been the sexiest and most gaudy of our cities. In this book, the third in a series in which leading Australian authors write about their hometowns, novelist Delia Falconer conjures up its sandstone, humidity, and jacarandas. It is a slightly unreal place, haunted by a past that it has never quite grasped, or come to terms with. Here, Falconer twines the stories of the people that have made Sydney the twenty-first century city it is today. Mad clergymen, amateur astronomers, Indigenous weather experts, crims and victims, photographers and artists: their stories are surprising, funny, and moving.
About the author
Delia Falconer
Delia Falconer is the author of two novels, the bestselling The Service of Clouds, shortlisted for major literary awards including the Miles Franklin Award, and The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers and Selected Stories, shortlisted among other awards for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Sydney was winner of the Nib: CAL Waverley Award in 2012 and was shortlisted for various major awards, such as the Prime Minister's Literary Awards. She is also the editor of The Penguin Book of the Road (2008) and Best Australian Stories (2008 and 2009). Delia is now a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at UTS.
How to make gravy – Paul Kelly
How to make gravy
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Non-fiction
Published by: Penguin Random House
How to Make Gravy had its genesis in a series of concerts. Over four nights Paul Kelly performed, in alphabetical order, one hundred of his songs. In between songs he told stories about them, and from those tales grew How to Make Gravy.
Each of its hundred chapters consists of lyrics followed by a story, the nature of the latter taking its cue from the former. Some pieces are confessional, some tell Kelly's personal and family history, some take you on a road tour with the band—from the point of inspiration to writing, honing, collaborating, performing, recording and reworking.
About the author
Paul Kelly
Paul Kelly is recognised as one of the most significant singer/songwriters in the country. As well as issuing an enduring body of work both solo and with his bands, Kelly has written film scores, produced albums for and written songs with some of Australia and New Zealand's finest artists.
He was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1997 and had two songs included in the APRA list of Top 30 Australian songs of all time. In 2011 Paul Kelly received the Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music at the APRA Music Awards.
The party – Richard McGregor
The party
Shortlist year: 2011
Shortlist category: Non-fiction
Published by: Penguin Random House (Allen Lane)
Richard McGregor's The Party has been established as the book on China and its political leadership. It is indispensable to understanding what may soon become the most powerful country on earth, and here is it is newly updated to include material on the once-in-a-decade leadership changes taking place in November 2012.
China's Communist Party is the largest, most powerful political machine in the world. Here, Richard McGregor delves deeply into its inner sanctum, revealing how this secretive cabal keeps control of every aspect of the country—its military and media, legal system and businesses, even its religious organisations. How has the Party merged Marx, Mao and the market to create a global superpower? And what does this mean for the world?
About the author
Richard McGregor
Having joined the Financial Timesin 2000 in Shanghai and being appointed China bureau chief in 2005, Richard McGregor is now Washington Bureau Chief for the FT. McGregor has won numerous awards throughout his nearly two decades of reporting from north Asia, including a 2010 Society of Publishers in Asia Editorial Excellence Award for his coverage on the Xinjiang Riots and 2008 SOPA Awards for Editorial Intelligence. He has spent twenty years in north Asia, starting in Taiwan, and then in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Beijing, where he established offices for The Australian newspaper. He has also contributed articles and reports to the BBC, the International Herald Tribune and the Far Eastern Economic Review.
