ACT Notable Awards
ACTW Family Awards (in memorium) and ACT Notable Awards
The ACT Notable Book Awards highlight the excellence and talent of the literary sector in the ACT region. The winners from each category have produced an exceptional published work. Notable is defined as “worthy of attention or notice; remarkable”, and judges kept this definition in mind when judging the entries in the ACT Notable Book Awards. This definition is the basis for the ACT Notable Awards. Across all categories we asked judges to consider which entries stand out in their brilliance and demonstrate literary excellence, powerful narrative structure and considered and impactful use of language.
Thank you to our incredible judges and congratulations to all shortlisted writers. We are delighted to be able to announce the 2020 and 2021 awardees. On Friday 29 July we held our first in-person awards event in more than two years at Canberra Contemporary Art Space. Together we celebrated the immense talent of ACT region writers.
The Categories spanned SMALL and BIG Press publishing in 2020/2021 combined. The categories were divided into FICTION, NONFICTION, CHILDREN’S and POETRY. There were thirty-nine awards distributed, a testament to the talent and capability of the ACT region sector.
“The ACT Notable Awards are about celebrating the immense talent of ACT region writers, who continued to create work during an unprecedented time… writing is such a solitary artform so it is so important that we can come together and celebrate everyone’s achievements”
FAMILY AWARDS
JUNE SHENFIELD POETRY AWARDS
FIRST PLACE Rosa O’Kane, If I Put It In A Poem (ACT)
SECOND PLACE Andrew Spiker, In the Oxford book of ballads (VIC)
THIRD PLACE Claire Miranda Roberts, Armillaris (VIC)
ANNE EDGEWORTH WRITER’S FELLOWSHIP AWARD
JOINT AWARD WINNERS Julia Faragher and Samantha Tidy
The Anne Edgeworth Emerging Writer’s Fellowship is provided to an emerging writer in the Canberra Region. The Fellowship is worth up to $5,000 and is to be used to advance the recipients’ development in the craft of writing. The Fellowship is provided annually by the Anne Edgeworth Trust and administered by ACT Writers.
JULIA FARAGHER
I am so grateful to the Anne Edgeworth Trust and ACT Writers for awarding me the Anne Edgeworth Emerging Writers Fellowship. The Fellowship will support the development of my LoveOzYA manuscript Murder at St Thérèse College which stars a Vietnamese protagonist and is set at a prestigious university college in Canberra. It will allow me to engage a professional editor to read my manuscript and give me insightful feedback on my writing.
I am excited to have the opportunity to devote time and attention to this project and to get one step closer to publication.
SAMANTHA TIDY
Receiving the Anne Edgeworth Fellowship means valuable writing time, undisturbed and focussed on my project without distraction. Like many writers, I work a day job, manage a household and care for my young family. I have the added complexity of also running Storytorch Press, a small publisher focussed on books that promote sustainability, resilience and community which releases 4 books a year by talented authors, predominantly from the ACT. Whilst I greatly enjoy being a platform for promoting other writers, the Anne Edgeworth Fellowship will ensure that my own writing continues, with a residency at the Katharine Susannah Pritchard Writers Centre in Greenmount, WA. My early life and writing career started in the West, and to return to my birthplace will provide valuable reflection and a wellspring of inspiration for my project GROWING HOME, a young adult climate fiction novel which seeks to restore both our respect and faith in nature to provide for us.
SPECIAL BOOK AWARDS
The 2020 and 2021 Special Book Awards are designed to recognise the diverse and immense talent of work in the ACT region. This award recognises work that demonstrates uniqueness, literary excellence and surpasses genre. The Special Book Award is selected across all categories of the ACT Notable awards.
WINNER Special Book Award 2020
Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick, On a Barbarous Coast (Allen & Unwin)
On A Barbarous Coast is well researched and bravely imaginative. In lively and distinctive voices, the alternating perspectives of an English sailor on the Endeavour and a young Guru Yimidhirr boy provide a clever commentary on what white exploration might have been — and, in the process, sheds light on the blindness and brutality of the colonial enterprise.
WINNER Special Book Award 2021
Omar Musa, Killernova (Penguin Books Australia)
This eloquent, soulful, music riddled, image enriched book takes us on a journey to Borneo, but also through Musa’s mind. Running at a high temperature Musa places himself in ancestral locations that have changed and that are changing him: his world shape shifts, but he follows, busting rhythm and lines (both lyric and woodcut) of crafted emotion and soul searching.
ACT NOTABLE FICTION AWARDS
Judges - Robyn Cadwallader and Shelley Burr
“Many books that were not shortlisted are nonetheless finely imagined, and we hope every author keeps writing. More than ever, the world needs great stories”
2020 – SMALL PRESS
WINNER TR Napper, Neon Leviathan (Grimdark Magazine)
Neon Leviathan is a crackling collection of all too possible futures. Napper never talks down to the reader, trusting them to keep up with richly creative and complicated layers of technology, personal choices, addiction and human connections. - Judges’ comments
Highly commended Alison Booth, The Philosopher’s Daughters (RedDoor Press, UK)
2020 – BIG PRESS
WINNER Felicity Volk, Desire Lines (Hachette Australia)
Desire Lines gripped the judges from the first pages. Volk is a beautiful writer, who brings to life a variety of troubled and troubling characters, and explores a dark period in Australia’s history. Readers are taken through locations as disparate as 1950s London and the modern day Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Scenes in Canberra, while not given any weighting in the judging, are always lovely to see. - Judges’ comments
2021 – SMALL PRESS
WINNER Jenny Bond, Everything I Am (The Hard Word)
Every Thing I Am is a beautiful and heartbreaking story of loss, betrayal, and loyalty. Wonderfully crafted at a sentence level, Bond also shows a high level of mastery with structure, offering well paced reveals that feel inevitable but never dull. Even the most briefly appearing character feels real and fully formed. - Judges’ comments
Highly commended Kate Liston-Mills, Dear Ibis (Spineless Wonders)
2021 – BIG PRESS
WINNER Dylan van den Berg, Milk (Currency Press/The Street Theatre)
Milk is a stunning story of intergenerational trauma and the damage inflicted by invasion and ongoing colonisation. Van den Berg weaves song, story, biography and fiction to moving effect. The judges noted the challenge presented by reading a play as a work of writing, without what would be communicated on the stage by costume, lighting, sound cues and acting choices, but still found Milk to be a standout. - Judges’ comments
Highly commended Irma Gold, The Breaking (MidnightSun Publishing)
ACT NOTABLE NONFICTION AWARDS
Judges - Nicole Moore and Ginger Gorman
2020 – SMALL PRESS
WINNER Ian W. Shaw, Pandemic: The Spanish Flu in Australia 1918-1920 (Woodslane Press)
This accessible, syncretic history of Australia’s experience with the early twentieth-century flu epidemic is a very timely offering. It presents a considered and detailed nation-wide account, with an international comparative dimension and a focus on the contributions of individuals, health services and government, which also outlines Australian involvement in developing the Coryza vaccine.
2020 – BIG PRESS
WINNER David Dufty, Radio Girl: The Story of the Extraordinary Mrs Mac, Pioneering Engineer and Wartime Legend (Allen & Unwin)
This lively and informative biography introduces readers to the revealing story of a pioneering radio engineer whose enabling contribution to Australia’s war effort and to the participation of women in engineering careers has been little understood. Offering rich character and incident, Mrs Mac’s story is a reminder of what can be possible. - Judges’ comments
2021 – SMALL PRESS
WINNER Dianne Lucas, Coolamon Girl (Ginninderra Press)
2021 – BIG PRESS
WINNER Danielle Celermajer, Summertime (Penguin Books Australia)
An extraordinarily compelling response to the 2019-2020 bushfires, Summertime combines personal reflection and memoir with philosophy to explore our collective environmental grief, fear and loss, in the face of overwhelming destruction. Built around her richly considered relationships with the animals both in her life and in her care, as well as the great forests of the Southeast, Celermajer’s account courageously confronts collective loss, looking for ways to make our shared experience meaningful and enabling, as she seeks an inhabitable future.
ACT NOTABLE POETRY AWARDS
Judges - Lucy Alexander and Samia Goudie
2020 – SMALL PRESS
WINNER Penelope Layland, Nigh (Recent Work Press)
Layland’s words are used with the kind of surgical precision that don’t let the reader look away from the disquiet she wants to reflect on. She holds ‘a flensing knife or similarly subtle/ instrument’ to thought and whisks away any filter we might want to put on the poems. An outstanding collection that stares deeply into ‘the fracturing’ of the modern world. - Judges’ comments
Highly commended PS Cottier, Utterly (Ginninderra Press)
2020 – BIG PRESS N/A
2021 – SMALL PRESS
WINNER Sandra Renew, It’s the Sugar, Sugar (Recent Work Press)
This collection hits the reader with a rush of sweet energy swirling through the landscape of melting sugar towns, hot people, timescapes where the personal intersects with the political, always at a new wry angle. The reader is in the hands of an expert, form exercised to play with expectations, each poem dancing at the edges of the unseen placing that tension defiantly/joyfully front and centre. - Judges’ comments
Highly commended Sarah Rice, Text/ure (Recent Work Press)
Highly commended Sarah St Vincent Welch, Chalk Borders (Flying Island Books)
2021 – BIG PRESS
WINNER Lizz Murphy, “The Wear of My Face” (Spinifex Press)
A breath-theiving collection that rips into the ordinary - expertly levering at the self/other in the act of witnessing / being implicated. The complexity of life is exposed and wrestled into memorable lyrical form. Murphy’s attention rests on the fragility of the world /the poem/the human mind’s experience, revealing that place where ‘the world falls/apart of its own avail’.
- Judges’ comments
ACT NOTABLE CHILDREN’S AWARDS
Judges - Tracey Hawkins and David Conley
“Such an honour judging small and big press children’s book categories for 2020 and 2021 and culminating in a brilliant little evening with ACT Writers”
2020 – SMALL PRESS
WINNER Krys Saclier and Cathy Wilcox, Vote for Me (Wild Dog)
Highly commended Karen Hendriks and Kim Fleming, Feathers (Empowering Resources)
Highly commended Amy Laurens, A fox of storms & starlight (Inkprint Press)
2020 – BIG PRESS
WINNER Gina Newton and Rachel Tribout, Hold On! Saving the Spotted Handfish (CSIRO)
Hold On! Saving The Spotted Handfish is an informative narrative with stunning illustrations and an engaging design. Hold On! Saving the Spotted Handfish harnesses the harmony of illustrations and text to give a message of hope to children about protecting our planet’s natural resources. The language suits young readers while integrating inclusive scientific language with a glossary to support new language acquisition. - Judges’ comments
Highly commended Stephanie Owen Reeder and Tania McCartney, Australia’s Wild Weird Wonderful Weather (NLA Publishing)
Australia’s Wild Weird Wonderful Weather is a beautifully presented book and a significant contribution to the social, cultural and intellectual fabric of the 2022 children’s literature awards. It is composed of compelling themes and facts presented in a visually appealing manner which introduces a host of new technology in a fluent, engaging and original manner. - Judges’ comments
Highly commended Stephanie Owen Reeder, Will the Wonderkid (NLA Publishing)
2021 – SMALL PRESS
WINNER Irma Gold and Susannah Crispe, Where the Heart Is (Exisle Publishing)
Where The Heart Is, is the compelling true story of the connection and friendship between a man and a wild animal. The narrative contributes to social and environmental awareness packaged in a fabulous cohesion of illustrations. It is well written, and a touching narrative. Where The Heart Is has been beautifully designed with stunning end pages and is a charming, uplifting read.
Highly commended Catherine Meatheringham and Deb Hudson, All Dogs Bark (Windy Hollow Books)
2021 – BIG PRESS
WINNER Charles Massy and Mandy Foot, The Last Dragon (NLA Publishing)
The Last Dragon is a lovely narrative centred on a tiny earless dragon and his spider friend as they journey on their quest to find other earless dragon lizards. The story includes other Australian species and habitats- and their connectivity within the environment. The unity of the narrative and delicate illustrations is strong and draws the reader in to follow the journey of the endangered dragon lizard. It is a compelling story that positively contributes to a better understanding of this endangered species and the grassland ecosystems in the Monaro, Canberra and surrounding regions. - Judges’ comments
Highly commended Larry Brandy, Wiradjuri Country (NLA Publishing)
“Such a glorious evening catching up with my kidlit tribe and celebrating all our achievements in writing and publishing over the last couple of years at the ACT Notable Awards last night.”
“What a fab night out at the ACT Writers Notable Awards—a celebration of our amazing local book creators.”
WITH THANKS TO OUR SUPPORTERS AND SPONSORS
