I was busy when the awards were announced last week – actually I am still pretty busy as we are about to leave Italy for France – but I have a moment.

As I wrote in my shortlist post, Creative Australia’s page says they received 673 entries across six literary categories: fiction, non-fiction, young adult literature, children’s literature, poetry, and Australian history. The winner in each category will receive $80,000 (tax-free), with each shortlisted author receiving $5,000.

The winners this year, were

• Australian history: Rohan Howitt, The southern frontier (Melbourne University Publishing)
• Children’s literature: Zana Fraillon, Song of a thousand Seas (University of Queensland Press)
• Fiction: Leonie Norrington, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga and Djawundil Maymuru, A piece of red cloth (Allen & Unwin; Lisa’s review))
• Non-fiction: Kate Wild, The red house (Allen & Unwin)
• Poetry: Ender Başkan, Two hundred million musketeers (Giramondo Publishing)
• Young adult literature: Pip Harry, Drift (Hachette Australia)

I’m afraid this is a short post, without my usual add-ons, but the ABC wrote an interesting article about the awards, particularly about the Non-fiction winner, Journalist Kate Wild’s book is about “the incident in November 2019, when Mr Walker was shot and killed by police in Yuendumu, a remote community in the Northern Territory”, 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs”. This shooting – this death of yet another First Nations man at the dads of police or in police custody – resulted in a wave of protests in the Northern Territory, and protests and commentary elsewhere.

The judges said:

Her searing and unflinching investigation examines national difference, the depth of the colonial wound, and the awful repetition of state violence and dehumanisation that makes the confrontation at the heart of this book possible, even inevitable.

Wild says that she was concerned that people were taking positions “without thinking” but it’s dangerous writing in these contest spaces.

Australia’s collective view of history was changing and the country was changing with it, I said. How people reacted to Kumanjayi’s death and Mr Rolfe’s trial was one measure of how much.

This book sounds worth reading … on to my TBR Wishlist it goes.

Any thoughts?