On Thursday evening, I attended the presentation of the ACT Literary Awards (which I also attended last year when they were called the ACT Notable Book Awards). These awards are made by Marion (the ACT Writers Centre), and this year’s event was MC’d by the CEO Katy Mutton (left) and Board Chair, Emma Batchelor. As last year, the event had a lovely relaxed informality, while still paying real respect to the authors and their works.

The evening opened with a moving (and informative) “rite of passage” offered by local Ngunawal elder, Wally Bell. He explained that granting attendees a “rite of passage” is the correct process – is the one enacted by First Nations Australians across the country when they visit each other’s countries – not the “welcome to country” that we commonly experience at events. We keep learning new things, I’m finding, as different elders talk to us, and it makes these rites or ceremonies increasingly meaningful to us non-Indigenous Australians.

The awards were held, as last year, in the Canberra Contemporary Art Space, which occupies a beautiful building on the edge of Lake Burley Griffin. As our MCs said, when thanking CCAS for its ongoing sponsorship, it is an appropriate venue because there are links between all artists, including the fact that many have interdisciplinary practices. (Other sponsors included Big River Distilling which provided gin for the evening.)

But now, the awards…

Marion notes on the awards webpage, that across all categories they ask judges to consider which entries “stand out in their brilliance” and demonstrate the following:

• Literary excellence
• Powerful narrative structure
• Considered and impactful use of language

They also note that in Children’s literature they received a particularly broad field of entries from picture books through to YA Fiction, so would be awarding winners in both the younger and older reader sections.

It’s worth noting too that Marion accepts self-published entries, in recognition of the fact that this how many writers get started. This year two books were named self-published winners in their categories, and three were highly commended in theirs.

The judges were historian Professor Frank Bongiorno, First Nations author and academic Dr Paul Collis, writer Dan Hogan, children’s writer Krys Saclier, and literary critic/writer/Artistic Director of the Canberra Writers Festival Beejay Silcox.

For full information on the awards, including all the highly commendeds, and judges’ comments, check out Marion’s website.

As I didn’t share the shortlists for these awards, I am listing them, and highlighting the winners in bold.

Poetry

• Elanna Herbert, Sifting fire writing coast (Walleah Press)
• Paul Hetherington, Sleeplessness (Pierian Springs Press)
• Tim Metcalf, The moon the bone: Selected Poems 1986-2022 (Ginninderra Press)
• KA Nelson, Meaty bones (Recent Work Press)
• Sandra Renew, Apostles of anarchy (Recent Work Press)

Non fiction

• Kristen Alexander, Kriegies: The Australian airmen of Stalag Luft III
• Ryan Cropp, Donald Horne: A life in the Lucky Country (Black Inc.)
• Kate Fullagar, Bennelong & Phillip: A history unravelled (Scribner)
• Kellie Nissen, What cancer said and what I said back
• Fred Smith, The sparrows of Kabul (Puncher & Wattmann)
• Angus Trumble, Helena Rubinstein: The Australian years (Black Inc.)

Kristen Alexander won the self-published award for Kriegies. As with many of the categories, there were highly commended awards. One in this category was the late Angus Trumble’s book on Helen Rubenstein. Trumble’s brother, Hamish, accepted the award, and spoke entertainingly about his brother’s obsession with sussing out Helena Rubenstein’s early years in Australia and argued, pointedly, that it was appropriate for this book to be recognised in Canberra, “the city of facts”! He didn’t need to tell us that facts are important.

Children’s

This was a bit confusing, because there were two Children’s shortlists but three winners, so I am listing the two shortlists and noting what each winner was for. Canberra is rich in children’s writers, and there were, Katy Mutton said, a large number of entries in this category.

Shortlist 1:

• David Conley, That book about space stuff (Children’s self-published)
• Tania McCartney, Wildlife compendium of the World (Hardie Grant) (Children’s nonfiction)
• Kathy Weeden, Kim Drane, Phonobet (National Library of Australia)
• Rhian Willams, Martina Heiduczek, Surprise at the end of Onkaparinga Lane (Walker Books Australia)
• Barbie Robinson, Ian Robertson, Phoenix and Ralph

Shortlist 2:

• Jackie French, Danny Snell, The turtle and the flood (HarperCollins Australia) (Children’s picture book)
• Gary Lonesborough, We didn’t think it through (Allen & Unwin) (Children’s older readers)
• Amelia McInerney, Lucinda Gifford, Neil the amazing sea cucumber (Affirm Press)
• Emma Janssen, Strong little platypus

Fiction

• J. Ashley Smith, The measure of sorrow: Stories (Meerkat Press)
• Elisa Cristallo, The last famine
• Emma Grey, The last love note (Penguin Books Australia)
• Ayesha Inoon, Untethered (HarperCollins Australia)
• Kylie Needham, Girl in a pink dress (Penguin Books Australia)

The Marion Halligan Award

The Marion Halligan Award honours the life and work of Marion Halligan, who died earlier this year (see my post), and who, Marion’s website says, “captivated readers with her elegant prose and insightful storytelling. She was an enduring force of creativity, intellect, wit, and wisdom”. The aim of this award is to recognise “works that demonstrate uniqueness, literary excellence, and/or surpass genre boundaries”.

The award was introduced by Alex Sloan (who has appeared several times here). She spoke about our much beloved Marion, and then announced the inaugural winner: Paul Hetherington for his poetry book Sleeplessness.

Other awards

Three other awards were made:

• The Anne Edgeworth Emerging Writers Award, now in its 11th year, is made to an emerging writer and this year’s was shared between two writers – Jemima Parker and Gill Watson. It is worth up to $5,000 and is used “to advance the recipients’ development in the craft of writing”. The Fellowship is provided annually by the Anne Edgeworth Trust and administered by MARION.
• The June Shenfield National Poetry Award for an individual poem was won by Cate Furey for Momentum
• The MARION Fellowship to (TBA as I don’t see it on the website and I didn’t record the name)

Canberra (the ACT) is a small jurisdiction, but, as I wrote last year, it has an active, engaged and warm literary community that was once again well in evidence despite the rather chilly evening outside. After all, it is always wonderful to see writers being rewarded/recognised for their hard work – and, yes, writers, and their readers, do also like, sometimes, to party.