The shortlist for the 2012 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature has been announced, as writers across the country vie for a share in the $135,000 prize pool and the prestige attached to this celebration of Australian literature.
The winners will be announced Saturday 3 March, by South Australian Premier, the Hon Jay Weatherill, in a presentation at the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in Adelaide during Adelaide Writers’ Week which is held as part of the Adelaide Festival.
Winning authors will also be invited to give a public reading during a Writers’ Week session on Sunday 4 March at 5:30pm.
Introduced by the Government in 1986, the awards are managed by Arts SA, and offer a total $135,000 in prize money, shared between 10 awards, including six national awards, and two awards and two fellowships specifically for South Australian writers.
The most coveted national award is the Premier’s Award worth $10,000, which is selected from the winners of all the national categories.
New this year is an award for Young adult fiction, introduced to recognise literary merit in young adult fiction in its own distinct genre.
“Arts SA is delighted to be honouring excellence in Australian and South Australian writing, and once again we’ve seen a healthy increase overall in the number of nominations for the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, proving that Australia’s rich publishing and literary culture continues to thrive,” said Alexandra Reid, Executive Director at Arts SA.
“We’re especially proud this year to be able to recognise authors of young adult fiction with the introduction of a stand-alone award. There were more than 100 nominations, which shows there is strong literary interest in this genre,” she said.
Overall, nominations for 2012 were up by 82 to 843 nominations from 2010, continuing the healthy upwards trend. The highest number of nominations was received in the Non-fiction award category, with a total 186 nominations, followed by the Children’s literature award with 102 nominations.
The awards shortlists for 2012 are as follows:
Children’s literature award
Aaron Blabey, The Ghost of Miss Annabel Spoon (Viking)
Kate Constable, Crow Country (Allen & Unwin)
Bob Graham, A Bus Called Heaven (Walker Books) Rosanne Hawke, Taj and the Great Camel Trek (University of Queensland Press)
Norman Jorgensen (illustrator James Foley), The Last Viking (Fremantle Press)
Lian Tanner, The Keepers: Museum of Thieves (Allen & Unwin)
Young adult fiction award
Georgia Blain, Darkwater (Random House Australia)
D. M. Cornish, Monster Blood Tattoo Book Three: Factotum (Omnibus Books)
Ursula Dubosarsky, The Golden Day (Allen & Unwin)
Scot Gardner, The Dead I Know (Allen & Unwin)
Doug MacLeod, The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher (Penguin Books)
Vikki Wakefield, All I Ever Wanted (Text Publishing)
Fiction award
Anna Funder, All That I Am (Hamish Hamilton)
Gail Jones, Five Bells (Vintage)
Alex Miller, Autumn Laing (Allen & Unwin)
Kim Scott, That Deadman Dance (Picador Australia)
Dominic Smith, Bright and Distant Shores (Allen & Unwin)
Rohan Wilson, The Roving Party (Allen & Unwin)
John Bray poetry award
Jennifer Compton, Barefoot (Picaro Press)
Diane Fahey, The Wing Collection: New & Selected Poems (Puncher & Wattmann Poetry)
Les Murray, Taller When Prone (Black Inc.)
David Musgrave, Phantom Limb (John Leonard Press)
Tracy Ryan, The Argument (Fremantle Press)
Petra White, The Simplified World (John Leonard Press)
Non-Fiction award
James Boyce, 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia (Black Inc.)
Fiona Capp, My Blood’s Country (Allen & Unwin)
Jim Davidson, A Three Cornered Life: The Historian W.K. Hancock (University of New South Wales Press)
Mark McKenna, An Eye for Eternity, (The Miegunyah Press)
Hazel Rowley, Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage (Melbourne University Press)
Brenda Walker, Reading By Moonlight: How Books Saved A Life (Penguin Books)
Unpublished manuscript award
Henry Aybee, The Red Hat: An Australian Gothic Novel
Belinda Broughton, The Sparrow
Rachael Mead, The Sixth Creek
Margaret Merrilees, The First Week
Rob Walker, Tropeland
Jill Blewett playwright’s award
Nicki Bloom, A Cathedral
Elena Carapetis, Helen Back
Duncan Graham, Wolf Hunger
Barbara Hanrahan fellowship
Nicki Bloom, The Sun and the Other Stars
Carol Lefevre, A Maze in the Garden
David Sornig, You, Of All People
Photo Credits: Adelaide Festival
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