In early October, the shortlist for the biennial Barbara Jefferis Award, worth $50,000, was announced. This award, for those of you who don’t remember it, has very specific criteria:
“the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society”.
The eagle-eyed amongst you will realise that it is not the sex of the writer that’s relevant here (nor, in fact, the genre). This award is for books about women and girls – and so can be written by anyone of any sex – but it must also present them in a positive or empowering way. I wrote a Monday Musings post about this “positive or empowering” requirement two years ago. That year, the winner was Libby Angel’s The trapeze act, a book I hadn’t read then, hadn’t heard much about even, and still, I’m afraid, haven’t read.
This year’s shortlist of five books comprises four by women writers and one by a man AND, notably, three of the five are by Indigenous Australian writers.
- Tony Birch’s The white girl (my review)
- Melissa Lucashenko’s Too Much Lip (my review)
- Favel Parrett’s There Was Still Love (my review)
- Lucy Treloar’s Wolfe Island (Lisa’s review)
- Tara June Winch’s The Yield (my review)
Unbelievably for me, given my usual track record, I’ve read four of the five. I wish I’d read Treloar too because I know it’s been much enjoyed by bloggers, and it is set in a part of the USA that I have visited.
Judges Robyn Sheahan-Bright, Jeremy Fisher and Barbara Horgan, as reported by Books + Publishing, said of 2020’s submissions:
We were very much struck by the empathy with which the experiences of older women were depicted as powerful role models for those younger than them in so many titles—women who were survivors of both personal and family challenges and cataclysmic social, economic or environmental events.
… and the winner is
Of course, the one I haven’t read, Lucy Treloar’s Wolfe Island!
You can watch the announcement here, which includes an introduction by author Bri Lee, comments on each book by judge Robyn Sheahan-Bright, comments on their books by the short-listed authors, the winner’s announcement by Barbara Jefferis’ son Michael Little, and a gracious and strong response from the winner Lucy Treloar. In her words, she repeats the message I’ve shared here before which is that prizes like this (plus all arts funding) enable writers to buy time to write.
Congratulations to Lucy Treloar – and to all the shortlisted authors. I must read this book.
I haven’t been able to find anything about the 2020 Military History Prize, so am not sure about its continuation or, at least, its being awarded this year.
The overall winner, announced last night, 28 August, is Patrick Mullins’ Tiberius with a telephone: The life and stories of William McMahon. I attended and 
The winner of the Michael Crouch Award for a Debut Work was Jessica White’s Hearing Maud, which I have reviewed here (see link above). In her acceptance speech, White talked about how no-one listened to Maud (daughter of Australian novelist Rosa Praed) while she was alive, and that in paralleling Maud’s experience of profound deafness with her own, a century later, she wanted to show that little had changed in terms of discrimination and “the expectations that we hide our deafness.” I attended and 
It is not the richest award – though $8000 this year for the winner and $1000 for each runner-up is not bad either – but it carries a good deal of kudos. It has also done well over its 24 years in 
If you look at the Wikipedia link in the paragraph above, you’ll see that the number of awards made each year varies. In 1997, ten awards were made, but most commonly it seems that around three to four are announced. 
While SMH’s Best Young Australian Novelists is one of the best known emerging writers awards, there are others. Many, like this one, are age-related, such as The Australian Vogel Literary Award which was won this year by Katherine Kruimink, A treacherous country. But not all are. The 
And the winner, from around 170 books submitted, is Jess Hill’s See what you made me do: Power, control and domestic abuse. It is the fourth non-fiction book to win the award in eight years, confirming yet again Stella’s aim to be broad in the forms it encompasses. The previous three were Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s The erratics (2019, 
Jess Hill’s winner’s speech was articulate, convincing, engaging and oh so passionate about her subject and the book. Commissioned by Aviva Tuffield, it was some four years or so in the making, and was clearly (and not surprisingly) a very demanding book to write. Although I’m interested in its subject, I had not necessarily planned to read the book, but now I feel I must!
So yes, now really, the Awards! They were established by the South Australian government in 1986, and, like some other state literary awards, include both national and state-based prizes, as well as some fellowships for South Australian writers. Over the years, categories have come and gone. The original four categories were Fiction, Children’s Literature, Poetry and Non-fiction, with the original 1986 winners of these being, respectively, Helen Garner’s The children’s Bach (my review), Ivan Southall’s The long night watch, Robert Gray’s Selected poems: 1963-1983, and RM Gibbs A history of Prince Alfred College.
2020 Winners (National)
Whispering Gums 