Last year I didn’t attend the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards Dinner because it cost too much. Tonight’s presentation was a lot cheaper, being not a dinner but a cocktail event. But for the first time in many years I had read almost none of the short-listed books, so decided it didn’t make sense to attend.
However, I’m loath to let the occasion go completely unremarked in this blog, so here I am, reporting from afar.
For a moment it looked as if the event itself was superfluous. This tweet appeared almost two hours before the doors of the Library opened:
Was it a hoax, or a leak? The link was dead. I stayed tuned to Twitter. Once Ross Grayson Bell had delivered the address and a couple of tweeters had found each other, the announcements came thick and fast.
Hakan Harman announced the joint winners of the Community Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW Award as The Secret River, Andrew Bovell’s play based on Kate Grenville’s book, and Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser. I’ve wanted to see/read both.
Of the Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting shortlist I’d only seen Medea, Anne-Louise Sarks and Kate Mulvany, but didn’t expect it to win, though glad it was shortlisted. Van Badham’s Muff won. I haven’t seen it, but if the play is as good as her MCing of the March in May in Belmore Park yesterday it definitely deserves the prize.
I’d seen four of the six shows on the Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting list. My money was on Kim Mordaunt’s The Rocket, though it would have been nice to see A Moody Christmas score a victory for comic writing. Devil’s Dust by Kris Mrksa won, completely appropriate for a prize named after old Com Betty Roland.
The Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature list included some familiar names. It was won by The Girl Who Brought Mischief by Katrina Nannestad, which I haven’t read.
The Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature went to Zac and Mia by Amanda Betts.
The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry went to Novelties by Fiona Hile, who will be reading at Sydney University on Wednesday.
None of the subjects addressed in the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction list grabbed me by the throat: a 50 year old mystery death, a larrikin cricketer, an actor’s memoir, a ‘horrible history’ for grown-ups, a bit of war history, and – the one I would have chosen on the basis of the subject alone – the excavation of a dark family past. So I was glad when Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir by Kristina Olsson shared the award with Rendezvous with Destiny (the one about war and diplomacy) by Michael Fullilove.
UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing: Though I’d read none of the listed books, I had extra-literary reasons to cheer for one of them. It didn’t win. The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane took home the bacon. I look forward to reading it, as well as the other.
The pre-emptive tweet had taken much of the suspense out of the next couple of awards (whatever wins the novel prize is generally reported as having scooped the pool, even if it’s not book of the year).
Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of Travel, which has been beckoning from my bedroom bookshelf for months, won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, but not the People’s Choice, which went to The Railwayman’s Wife by Ashley Hay. It did win Book of the Year, so Michelle de Kretser took home three prizes. It couldn’t happen to a nicer person.
The special award went to Rodney Hall. I love this award, because every year someone who has worked long and hard and generously in literature is honoured. This one continues that tradition. According to the tweeters he gave a rousing and topical speech in defence of funding for the arts.
And in less than two hours it was all over till next year.
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