Tag Archives: Angus Cerini

2025 NSW [Premier’s] Literary Awards night

Posted on 20 May 2025 | 11 comments

I almost missed the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards this year. I missed the announcement of the short lists altogether, and only realised that the awards were last night because the Sydney Writers’ Festival is about to start and I think of the NSWPLAs as the first cab off the festival rank.

Here I am making up for the omission. Sadly I’ve read only one of the books, and seen a production of only one script, none of the winners.

Last night, the awards ceremony was live streamed. As always on a Monday, I was busy being grandfather, so I tuned in late. It’s all on YouTube and you can even watch it by clicking the image below. The ceremony begins with didjeridoo and Welcome to Country by Uncle Brendan Kerin, who spoke eloquently about the meaning of the word ‘Country’ in this context. After introductory speeches from librarians and politicians, the presentation of awards by Senior Judge Bernadette Brennan and Library Chair Bob Debus begins at about 29 minutes.

Here are the shortlists in the order of announcements, with links to the judges’ comments. The winners are first in each list, in bold:

UTS Glenda Adam’s Award for New Writing ($10,000)

Dr Tracy Westerman appeared on video, speaking from Perth: ‘As someone who doesn’t consider themselves to be a real writer, as a kid from the Pilbara who had a pretty unorthodox education through distance education, being awarded for my writing feels, frankly, a little bit surreal.’ She went on to talk about mental wellbeing: it ‘should never be just for the privileged, and Jilya sheds light on the reality that it continues to be … because of a one-size-fits-all, monocultural approach to mental health.’

Multicultural NSW Award ($30,000)

Nam Le, also on video, spoke against a background of a bookshelf piled high with books. He thanked many people and dedicated the award to his father, who ‘has been an engine of multiculturalism in this country’.

Indigenous Writers’ Prize ($30,000)

Lorraine Coppin, CEO of Juluwarlu Group, also spoke on video. She and her husband have spent years documenting Yindjibarndi stories – the graphic novel format is a way of making the history accessible to young people.

Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting ($30,000)

Glenn Shea appeared in person! He is a member of the Stolen Generations. The play’s story comes from community. The question it asks is how do we plant seeds for our young people to shift and shape their decision-making about work lives and community. He shouted out La Mama theatre among many others.

Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting ($30,000)

Charles Williams was also in the room. He started out with a remark that must have struck a chord with many people in the movie industry: ‘I usually identify as a director more than as a writer, but I spend a lot of my life writing and not much directing.’ He quoted Charlie Kaufman: ‘A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people,’ and noted in passing that Kaufman stole the line from Thomas Mann.

Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature ($30,000)

Katrina Nannestad thanked all the right people, but in particular her mother, whose story is in the book.

Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature ($30,000)

Emma Lord said among other things that everything she writes is for her daughter, even though she is too young for the books. She acknowledged the courage of her publishers who accepted a book with a pandemic in it during a pandemic. Following a developing theme of the evening, she said her mother shared the award.

Translation Prize ($30,000)

Elizabeth Bryer accepted by video. She said she had decided to wind back her translation practice because she couldn’t see a way to make it viable. This award changes that, and means she can take on a project she had been thinking about – to set up a mentorship wth an emerging translator who is a person of colour or a heritage speaker.

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($30,000)

Hasib Hourani described rock flight as intended to explore both historical and speculative acts of liberation in Palestine. ‘Throwing a rock is one kind of protest. A book is another.’

Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction ($40, 000)

James Bradley revealed that winners had been instructed to speak for less than a minute. Among the many thankyous, he thanked Ashley Hay who read every draft. With a nod to W. H. Auden, he said that though it seems like books don’t make anything happen, his experience with this book has shown that this isn’t actually the case: ‘Books change minds, and by changing minds they can change the world, and at the moment that matters more than it has ever mattered before.’

Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($40,000)

Fiona McFarlane is on the road, so Alex Craig from her publishers Allen & Unwin read a speech on her behalf.

The University of Sydney People’s Choice Award ($10,000)

The Lasting Harm, Lucia Osborne-Crowley (Allen & Unwin)

Lucia Osborne-Crowley was another video appearance. Before she made the necessary thankyous she noted the importance of writers speaking up for Palestinians who are being subjected to genocide and war crimes. She thanked the survivor community who voted for her – the book is for and about and by survivors of sexual violence and child sexual violence.

Special Award

This award went to Liminal. The award was accepted by founding editor Leah Jing McIntosh. Evidently aware than many people watching the awards or reading about them might not have herd of Liminal, she began by explaining that it is ‘a project driven by the desire to make visible the unacknowledged structures of racism that so dehumanise all of us.’ She went on, ‘We work towards new ways of thinking, of seeing, of being in the world. That is to say, we work together towards a better future. We know we cannot do it alone.’

Book of the Year ($10,000)

36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem, Nam Le (Scribner Australia). Ben Ball from Scribner Australia read a speech written by Nam Le. He expanded on his earlier dedication to his father, and spoke interestingly and powerfully about multiculturalism. I won’t try to summarise his speech here out of respect for his intellectual property. I hope it’s published somewhere. At heart it was a warning against complacency.

The twin shadows of Gaza and Trump were never far from the stage, and repudiations of all they stood for were frequent. And what a reading list has emerged from the evening, even if only of the winners.

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NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Night

Posted on 17 May 2016 | 3 comments

I’d love to go to the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards again one of these years, but $60 for a cocktail event is a stretch even for people who drink alcohol, and it’s way out of my range for hors d’oeuvres, sparkling water and speeches. Maybe I’ll get a freebie one of these years as a designated blogger, but for this year, as for the last couple, here’s how the evening went as gleaned from Twitter (Noting by the way that Twitter account @NSW_PLA has been silent for five years, and the facebook page ‘NSW Premier’s Literary Awards‘ for nearly three, I put my faith, mainly, in #PremiersLitAwards).

In the lead-up, there was a flurry of good-luck messages from publishers, seven tweets from one publisher lobbying for votes in the People’s Choice Award, and at least one person wondering if the recent Australia Council cuts to literary magazines would lead to an ‘interesting’ evening.

The first tweeter of the evening, a book editor from Text Publishing, turned up about 10 to 6, and a little later the State Library account posted a moody photo of the crowd gathering upstairs at the Mitchell Library, and we were away.

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Twitter was fairly tightlipped during the night – nothing about what anyone was wearing, no jokes, and little from acceptance speeches. Maybe that’s what happens when it’s a cocktail event rather than a dinner. However, here’s what I’ve got. Links are to either my blog posts about books or the State Library’s listings of the awards.

Just before 7 the State Librarian officially welcomed everyone. The Welcome to Country included didgeridoo, but no one tweeted the name of the welcomer(s). Ross Grayson Bell, senior judge (I guess that’s what used to be call Chair of the Judging Panel), spoke briefly, saying that the Awards reflected the diversity of Australian writing (and so foreshadowing a major theme of the evening). Wesley Enoch delivered what Twitter said was an inspiring Address: among other things he said that when you are feeling your lowest is when you should make more art, and spoke of ‘storytelling for a nation that is in want of a memory’ (Wesley Enoch is a Murri man).

In a welcome departure from recent practice the Premier Mike Baird himself presented the awards. He spoke of J D Salinger, and said that ‘stories remind us why we’re here, what we’ve forgotten, and help us to inhabit other worlds’, echoing Wesley Enoch’s words. Jennifer Byrne took over as MC and the announcements (what she called a ‘rollcall of excellence’) began.

Multicultural NSW Award ($20,000) went to Good Muslim Boy by Osamah Sami (Hardie Grant Books). He gave a ‘very funny and memorable’ acceptance speech. No details.

Indigenous Writer’s Prize (a new biennial award worth $30,000). Of the shortlisted books I’d read only Inside My Mother by Ali Cobby Eckermann (Giramondo). The prize was shared between Dark Emu  by Bruce Pascoe (Magabala Books) and Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven (University of Queensland Press), which must be wonderful books.

Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting ($30,000).  The Bleeding Tree, Angus Cerini (Currency Press in association with Griffin Theatre Company). I knew I should have subscribed to the Griffin.

Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting ($30,000). Of the shortlist, I’ve seen only Last Cab to Darwin, and though it had many good things about it, it would have surprised me if it won. The winner was the fourth episode of Deadline Gallipoli, ‘The Letter’, written by Cate Shortland (Matchbox Pictures) and screened on Foxtel, so bad luck for us non-subscribers.

The Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature ($30,000) went to Teacup, written by Rebecca Young & illustrated by Matt Ottley (Scholastic Australia). The Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature ($30,000) was won by Alice Pung’s Laurinda (Black Inc.).

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($30,000). Again, I’d only read one book, Joanne Burns’s brush (Giramondo). It won!

Of the shortlist for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction ($40,000) I had once again just one book under my belt, Magda Szubanski’s wonderful Reckoning: A Memoir (Text Publishing). Once again, it won. I was doing well. Mike Baird held Magda’s phone for her so her mother and brother could hear her acceptance speech. Someone tweeted at this point that a number of award winners spoke of their family histories and ‘complex journeys to Australia as displaced persons’.

UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing (a mere $5000) went to An Astronaut’s Life by Sonja Dechian (Text Publishing). Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($40,000)went to Locust Girl, A Lovesong by Merlinda Bobis (Spinifex Press), a post-apocalyptic novel. One tweeter congratulated her for helping us ‘care across borders’. The People’s Choice Prize, which is restricted to the grown-up novels, went to The Life of Houses, Lisa Gorton (Giramondo).

The Special Award (for which, if money is involved, the amount is not easily discoverable) was given to Rosie Scott, described by Susan Wyndham on Twitter as ‘admired author, supporter of young writers, asylum seekers, refugees, many social causes’.

The book of the year (again, monetary value not easily discovered) went to Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe. Accepting his award, he said to the people in the room, ‘I want to hear your story, because I would be spellbound.’

Then the State Library account tweeted the hashtag #BestSpeechesEver. So those of us pressing our noses against the glass wall of Twitter know what we missed out on. It was all over bar the reading – oh, and the many pictures of underdressed young women that began appearing with the Awards hashtag during the night.

 

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