Fog a Dox

WINNER

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Young adult literature

Published by: Magabala Books

Albert Cutts is a tree feller. A fella who cuts down trees. Fog is a fox cub raised by a dingo. He’s called a dox because people are suspicious of foxes and Albert Cutts owns the dingo and now the dox. Albert is a bushman and lives a remote life surrounded by animals and birds. All goes well until Albert has an accident ...

This is a story of courage, acceptance and respect. The dialogue is finely crafted and Indigenous cultural knowledge and awareness are seamlessly integrated into the story.

About the author

Bruce Pascoe

Author Bruce Pascoe is a Tasmanian, Bunurong and Yuin man who lives on country, deep in the Victorian bush.

A prolific writer, Bruce is the author of over 20 books. In 2016, his book Dark Emu (Magabala Books 2014) – which argues that systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history – won the Book of the Year and Indigenous Writer’s Prize in the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.

In 2017, his children’s book, Mrs Whitlam (Magabala Books 2016) was shortlisted for the CBCA’s Younger Readers Book of the Year.

Judges’ comments

Bruce Pascoe's Fog a Dox is a work of profound humanity' that ‘delights with its gentle humour, its knowledge of the bush and of the hidden workings of the heart, and its often surprising originality of expression. It gives an eloquent voice to those rarely heard. It has a place in the canon of Australian literature and is in every respect an appropriate winner'.

Pascoe's is an original voice and his story of people and country is beautiful in its simplicity. It speaks of a love of the land and its animals, of the innate goodness of bush people, of being an outsider and of earned respect. Its language and dialogue are crisp, authentic and inventive. The author's Aboriginality shines through but he wears it lightly, with an inclusivity brilliantly expressed in the bushmen's encounter with a young girl suffering from leukaemia.

Everything Left Unsaid

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Young adult literature

Published by: Penguin Random House

Three children have been sent to live in the countryside, safe from the war in London. When they find two boys hiding in a castle, the past and future come together to make an extraordinary adventure.

Winner of the 2013 CBCA Book of the Year – Younger Readers.

About the author

Jessica Davidson

Jessica Davidson was only 22 when her first novel, What Does Blue Feel Like?, was published. She went on to win the Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist Award in 2008.

Jessica lives in Queensland, where she divides her time between teaching and writing. Everything Left Unsaid is her second novel.

Friday Brown

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Young adult literature

Published by: The Text Publishing Company

Seventeen-year-old Friday Brown is on the run—running to escape memories of her mother and of the family curse. And of a grandfather who’d like her to stay. She’s lost, alone and afraid. Friday Brown is the breathtaking second novel from the author of the award-winning All I Ever Wanted. Vikki Wakefield is an astonishing talent.

About the author

Vikki Wakefield

Vikki Wakefield’s first Young Adult novel, All I Ever Wanted, won the 2012 Adelaide Festival Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction, as did her second novel, Friday Brown, in 2014.

Friday Brown was also an Honour Book, Children’s Book Council of Australia, in 2013. Among other awards, it was shortlisted for the prestigious Prime Minister’s Awards, in 2013.

Vikki lives in the Adelaide foothills with her family.

Grace Beside Me

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Young adult literature

Published by: Magabala Books

Grace Beside Me is a warmly rendered story of life in a small town that interweaves the mundane with the profound and the spiritual.

Told through the eyes of teenager, Fuzzy Mac, awkward episodes of teen rivalry and romance sit alongside the mystery of Nan’s visions and a ghostly encounter. Against a backdrop of quirky characters, including the holocaust survivor who went to school with Einstein and the little priest always rushing off to bury someone before the heat gets to them, Grace Beside Me is full of humour and timely wisdom.

About the author

Sue McPherson

Sue McPherson is a visual artist and proud Wiradjuri woman living in Eumundi, Queensland. Inspired to write by her two teenage sons, Sue took a writing workshop in Coolum and, three months later, started writing Grace Beside Me. She has since gone on to write the 12-minute short drama, Nan and a Whole Lot of Trouble, for ABC TV, which aired in 2016.

In 2017, Grace Beside Me was commissioned by NITV to be its first ever scripted live-action series. In an Australian first, the series will consist of 13 episodes to be screened on NITV, ABC, and the Disney Channel.

The Children of the King

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Young adult literature

Published by: Penguin Random House

Three children have been sent to live in the countryside, safe from the war in London. When they find two boys hiding in a castle, the past and future come together to make an extraordinary adventure.

Winner of the 2013 CBCA Book of the Year – Younger Readers

About the author

Sonya Hartnett

Sonya Hartnett's work has won numerous Australian and international literary prizes and has been published around the world.

Uniquely, she is acclaimed for her stories for adults, young adults and children.

Her accolades include the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Of A Boy), The Age Book of the Year (Of A Boy), the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize (Thursday's Child), the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year for both Older and Younger Readers (Forest, The Silver Donkey, The Ghost's Child, The Midnight Zoo and The Children of the King), the Victorian Premier's Literary Award (Surrender), shortlistings for the Miles Franklin Award (for both Of a Boy and Butterfly) and the CILP Carnegie Medal (The Midnight Zoo). Hartnett is also the first Australian recipient of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (2008).

Golden Boys, Sonya’s third novel for adults, was shortlisted for the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award and she also published her third picture book, The Wild One. She has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards three times.

Farewell, Dear People

WINNER

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Australian history

Published by: Scribe

For Australia, a new nation with a relatively small population, the death of 60,000 soldiers during World War I was catastrophic. It is hardly surprising, then, that Australians evaluating the consequences of the conflict have tended to focus primarily on the numbing number of losses — on the sheer quantity of all those countrymen who did not return.

That there must have been extraordinary individuals among them has been implicitly understood, but these special Australians are unknown today. This book seeks to retrieve their stories and to fill the gaps in our collective memory. Farewell, Dear People contains ten extended biographies of young men who exemplified Australia's gifted lost generation of World War I.

About the author

Ross McMullin

Ross McMullin is a historian and biographer who has written extensively about Australia's involvement in World War I.

His biographies include the award-winning Pompey Elliott and Will Dyson: Australia's radical genius, which was highly commended by the judges of the National Biography Award. Dr McMullin's most recent book, Farewell, Dear People: Biographies of Australia's lost generation, was awarded the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History and the National Cultural Award.

He is also the author of the ALP centenary history The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party 1891–1991 and another book about Australian political history, So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and the world's first national labour government.

Judges’ comments

Ross McMullin has taken 10 young men from different backgrounds and various parts of the country who were killed in the Great War and poignantly recounts the story of their relatively short lives. Amongst these lost leaders were sportsmen, lawyers, a scientist, a politician, a farmer and a winemaker.

The book, drawing on first hand sources, provides a fascinating glimpse into the Australia of the late 19th Century and then the first decade before the conflict that engulfed Europe and drew in the British dominions. It also tells the reader a great deal about how the war was actually fought on the ground by those present on the Western Front and at Gallipoli. Particularly moving are the accounts of how the families of these young men responded to their deaths. Many of them never fully recovered and the memory of this lost generation was an ever-present shadow over Australia in the 1920s and 1930s. This is a powerful and important contribution to Australian history.

Gough Whitlam: His Time (vol. 2)

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Australian history

Published by: Melbourne University Publishing

Gough Whitlam, Australia's twenty-first prime minister, swept to power in December 1972, ending twenty-three years of conservative rule.

It was an ascendancy bitterly resented by some, never accepted by others, and ended with dismissal by the Governor-General barely three years later-an outcome that polarised debate and left many believing the full story had not been told. In this much anticipated second volume of her biography of Gough Whitlam, Hocking has used previously unearthed archival material and extensive interviews with Gough Whitlam, his family, colleagues and foes, to bring the key players in these dramatic events to life.

This definitive biography takes us behind the political intrigue to reveal a devastated Whitlam and his personal struggle in the aftermath of the dismissal, during the unfulfilled years that followed and his eventual political renewal as Australia's ambassador to UNESCO.

About the author

Jenny Hocking

Jenny Hocking is Head of the School of Journalism, Australian Indigenous Studies at Monash University.

She is the author of two major political biographies, Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography, shortlisted in the South Australian Festival Awards for Literature: National Non-Fiction Awards, and Frank Hardy: Politics Literature Life, shortlisted in the NSW Premier's History Awards. Jenny has also written extensively on counter-terrorism and democracy, most recently in Terror Laws: ASIO, Counter-terrorism and the Threat to Democracy.

The Sex Lives of Australians: A History

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Australian history

Published by: Black Inc

Cross-dressing convicts, effeminate bushrangers and women-shortage woes – here is the first ever history of sex in Australia, from Botany Bay to the present-day.

In this fascinating social history, Frank Bongiorno uses striking examples to chart the changing sex lives of Australians. Tracing the story up to the present, Bongiorno shows how the quest for respectability always has another side to it.

Along the way he deals with some intriguing questions – What did it mean to be a 'mate'? How did modern warfare affect soldiers' attitudes to sex? Why did the law ignore lesbianism for so long? – and introduces some remarkable characters both reformers and radicals. This is a thought-provoking and enlightening journey through the history of sex in Australia.

With a foreword by Michael Kirby, AC CMG.

About the author

Frank Bongiorno

Frank Bongiorno is associate professor of history at the Australian National University and author of the award-winning The Sex Lives of Australians. He has written for the Monthly, the Australian and Inside Story.

The Censor’s Library

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Australian history

Published by: University of Queensland Press

The Censor’s Library, by Nicole Moore, is the first comprehensive examination of Australian book censorship, based around the author’s discovery of the secret ‘censor’s library’. Combining scholarship with the narrative tension of a thriller, Moore exposes the scandalous history of censorship in Australia.

About the author

Nicole Moore

Nicole Moore has published widely on Australian literary history, nationally and internationally. Her bibliography Banned in Australia (co-authored with Marita Bullock) was launched on the Austlit web resource in 2008. She was contributing editor to the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature for the period 1900-1950 (Allen and Unwin 2009). She is Associate Professor in English at the University of New South Wales at ADFA in Canberra.

Sandakan

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Australian history

Published by: Penguin Random House

The untold story of the Sandakan Death Marches of the Second World War.
This is the story of the three-year ordeal of the Sandakan prisoners of war – a barely known episode of unimaginable horror. After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the Japanese conquerors transferred 2500 British and Australian prisoners to a jungle camp some eight miles inland of Sandakan, on the east coast of North Borneo. For decades after the Second World War, the Australian and British governments would refuse to divulge the truth of what happened there, for fear of traumatising the families of the victims and enraging the people.

The prisoners were broken, beaten, worked to death, thrown into bamboo cages on the slightest pretext, starved and subjected to tortures so ingenious and hideous that none survived the onslaught with their minds intact, and only an incredibly resilient few managed to withstand the pain without yielding to the hated Kempei-tai, the Japanese military police.

But this was only the beginning of the nightmare. In late 1944, Allied aircraft were attacking the coastal towns of Sandakan and Jesselton. To escape the bombardment, the Japanese resolved to abandon the Sandakan Prison Camp and move 250 miles inland to Ranau, taking the prisoners with them as slave labour, carriers and draught horses. Their journey became known as the Sandakan Death Marches. Of the 1000-plus prisoners sent on the Death Marches, only six – all of them Australians – survived.

This important and harrowing book narrates the full story of Sandakan, as told through the experiences of many of the participants. Paul Ham has interviewed the families of survivors and the deceased, in Australia, Britain and Borneo, and consulted thousands of court documents in an effort to piece together exactly what happened to the people who suffered and died in British North Borneo, and who was responsible.

About the author

Paul Ham

Paul Ham is the author of Hiroshima Nagasaki (2011), Vietnam: The Australian War (2007) and Kokoda (2004). Vietnam won the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Australian History and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Prize for Non-Fiction (2008). Kokoda was shortlisted for the Walkley Award for Non-Fiction and the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Non-Fiction.

Sandakan: The Untold Story of the Sandakan Death Marches was published in 2012 and was shortlisted for the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Award for History.

A former Sunday Times correspondent, with a Master's degree in Economic History from the London School of Economics, Paul now devotes most of his time to writing history. He lives in Paris and Sydney with his family.

The Australian Moment

WINNER

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Non-fiction

Published by: Penguin Random House

George Megalogenis, one of our most respected political and economic writers, reviews the key events since the 1970s that have forged institutional and political leadership and a canny populace. He examines how we developed from a closed economy racked by the oil shocks, toughed it out during the sometimes devastating growing pains of deregulation, and survived the Asian financial crisis, the dotcom tech wreck and the GFC to become the last developed nation standing in the 2000s. As a result, whatever happens next, we're as well positioned as any to survive the ongoing rumblings of the Great Recession.

About the author

George Megalogenis

George Megalogenis is an author and journalist with three decades' experience in the media. The Australian Moment won the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-fiction and the 2012 Walkley Award for Non-fiction, and formed the basis for the ABC documentary series Making Australia Great. He is also the author of Faultlines, The Longest Decade, Quarterly Essay 40: Trivial Pursuit—Leadership and the End of the Reform Era and Quarterly Essay 61: Balancing Act—Australia Between Recession and Renewal.

Judges' comments

The Australian Moment examines the social and economic contributions of both sides of politics, from the Whitlam government of the 70s to the global crises of the early 21stCentury, detailing how each government has responded to both internal and external conditions. While most readers will be familiar with the events of recent history, Megalogenis provides additional insights from declassified documents from the USA; and a fascinating and probing series of interviews, where he asks successive Prime Ministers to comment on the value of each other's contribution.

A seasoned political journalist, George Megalogenis writes with elegance and clarity.
The Australian Moment is an important contribution to Australia's social and political history, not least for its ability to explain the Australian reform agenda since the 1970s to a broad audience.

Uncommon Soldier

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Non-fiction

Published by: Allen & Unwin

Chris Masters turns his penetrating gaze on the young men and women who make up the Australian Army. Having been taken into their ranks in a way rarely afforded an outsider, he gives heart and soul to the contemporary digger: how they are selected, how they are led, and how they are transformed from civilians to disciplined professional soldiers. And by sharing their experiences, he puts under severe challenge that soldiering is the province of dumb grunts.

Uncommon Soldier is a rich and powerful character study of the modern Australian soldier - war fighter, peacekeeper, street-level diplomat and aid-worker.

About the author

Chris Masters

Chris Masters is Australia's best-known investigative reporter, and is the author of the bestselling Jonestown (2006). In 1985, he won Australia's most prestigious award in journalism, the Gold Walkley, for his Four Corners report on the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. His reports 'The Big League' and 'The Moonlight State' both led to royal commissions that helped transform the nation.

Bradman’s War

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Non-fiction

Published by: Penguin Random House

The Australian and English Test cricketers who fought and survived together in WWII came home planning to resume the Ashes in a new spirit of friendship. Australia's legendary captain had something else in mind.

The 1948 'Invincibles' are the only Australian team to complete a tour of England undefeated. Knox exposes the mixed feelings among the fans, commentators and players about how their feats were achieved. At its heart was a rift between players who had experienced the horrors of active duty, epitomised by the fiery RAAF pilot Keith Miller, and those who had not, such as the invalided Bradman

About the author

Malcolm Knox

Malcolm Knox is the former literary editor and award-winning cricket writer of the Sydney Morning Herald, where he broke the Norma Khouri story, for which he won one of his two Walkley Awards. His novels include A Private Man, winner of the Ned Kelly Award; The Life; and The Wonder Lover. His many non-fiction titles include The Greatest: The Players, the Moments, the Matches 1993–2008; The Captains: The Story Behind Australia's Second Most Important Job; Boom: The Underground History of Australia, From Gold Rush to GFC, which won the 2013 Ashurst Business Literature Prize; and Bradman's War.

Plein Airs and Graces: The life and times of George Colingridge

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Non-fiction

Published by: Wakefield Press

Plein Airs and Graces examines the extraordinary life of George Collingridge de Tourcey, a landscape painter of the late nineteenth century, just ahead of the Australian impressionists. When he emigrated from France to Australia he grew passionate about the possibilities of his new country, and worked tirelessly to contribute to it – not least for his Discovery of Australia (1895), in which on the evidence of ancient maps he argued controversially for Portuguese and Hispanic pre-discovery of Australia.

About the author

Adrian Mitchell

Adrian Mitchell retired from academic life at the University of Sydney in 2006, though he has remained an honorary research associate in the Department of English since then. In the respite from that kind of confusion he has managed to publish five previous books, all with Wakefield Press, and all hovering about the interface of fiction and nonfiction. These are all stories of people and communities that should be better known than they are.

Bold Palates: Australia's gastronomic heritage

Shortlist year: 2013

Shortlist category: Non-fiction

Published by: Wakefield Press

In Bold Palates Professor Barbara Santich describes how, from earliest colonial days, Australian cooks have improvised and invented, transforming and 'Australianising' foods and recipes from other countries, along the way laying the foundations of a distinctive food culture.

What makes the Australian barbecue characteristically Australian? Why are pumpkin scones an Australian icon? How did eating lamb become a patriotic gesture?

Bold Palates is lovingly researched and extensively illustrated. Barbara Santich helps us to a deeper understanding of Australian identity by examining the way we eat. Not simply a gastronomic history, her book is also a history of Australia and Australians.

About the author

Barbara Santich

Barbara Santich is an internationally respected culinary historian and the author of seven books. For many years she taught food history and culture, and food writing, at the University of Adelaide. She lives in South Australia and has recently written the history of Haigh's Chocolates, Enjoyed for Generations (Wakefield Press).