Bronwyn Lea
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Tag: Bill Gammage
New Queensland literary award
Campbell Newman might have hoped the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were dead, buried and cremated: the allocated prize pool of $230,000 shared across 14 categories had been scratched from his budget and any mention of the awards, including past winners since 1999, was thoroughly wiped from his website. But miraculously – or rather due to the harnessed outrage and exhaustive efforts of volunteers from Queensland's literary and arts community – a new suite of literary awards has arisen from the ashes without a skerrick of government funding, nor the Premier's name in the title.
Campbell Newman might have hoped the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were dead, buried and cremated: the allocated prize pool of $230,000 shared across 14 categories had been scratched from his budget and any mention of the awards, including past winners since 1999, was thoroughly wiped from his website.
But miraculously – or rather due to the harnessed outrage and exhaustive efforts of volunteers from Queensland's literary and arts community – a new suite of literary awards has arisen from the ashes without a skerrick of government funding, nor the Premier's name in the title. Short on lead time and with no funding in place, the group led by Matthew Condon, Krissy Kneen and Stuart Glover assembled in April to create a website and Facebook page which attracted more than 1000 fans in under a week.
The Copyright Agency Cultural Fund injected $20,000 into the kitty, and a fundraising campaign on www.pozible.com raised more than $30,000 for author prizes and associated costs. Avid Reader bookshop offered its premises to house and distribute the 600-plus book and manuscript submissions the campaign received.
The inaugural Queensland Literary Awards, announced last night in Brisbane, were described by Frank Moorhouse – winner of the QLA Fiction Book Award for his novel Cold Light – as "the noblest prize this year."
"It has some cache because it's a citizen's prize," he said, "not the Premier's prize."
Echoing sentiments expressed by Anna Funder in her Miles Franklin acceptance speech earlier this year, Moorhouse expounded: "Governments are not only there to legislate, but to affirm civilised values."
But if citizens are going to have to fund it with two dollars here and five dollars there," Moorhouse continued, "it is rather a shameful situation. It sends a very sad message to kids who want to get into the creative arts.
From a shortlist of 68 titles, the winners in each category of the Queensland Literary Awards received $1000, with Queensland novelist Simon Cleary, winner of the inaugural Courier-Mail's People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year, snapping up $5,000 for his novel, Closer to Stone.
Premier Campbell Newman and Ros Bates, Minister for Science, IT, Innovation and the Arts, so far have not offered their congratulations.
Fiction Book Award
Cold Light by Frank Moorhouse
Forecast: Turbulence by Janette Turner Hospital
Crimson Crop by Peter Rose
Non-Fiction Book Award
The People Smuggler by Robin De Crespigny
Young Adult Book Award
The Ink Bridge by Neil Grant
Children's Book Award
Kumiko and the Shadow Catchers by Briony Stewart
History Book Award
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage
Science Writer Award
Sex, Genes & Rock 'n' Roll: How Evolution has Shaped the Modern World by Rob Brooks
Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate
The Australian Moment: How We Were Made for These Times by George Megalogenis
Drama Script Award
War Crimes by Angela Betzien
Film Script Award
Dead Europe by Louise Fox
Television Script Award
Mabo by Sue Smith
Emerging Queensland Author – Manuscript Award
Island of the Unexpected by Catherine Titasey
Unpublished Indigenous Writer – David Unaipon Award
Story by Siv Parker
This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.
Author bronwynleaPosted on September 5, 2012 April 30, 2014 Categories CommentaryTags Angela Bentzien, Anna Funder, Bill Gammage, Briony Stewart, Campbell Newman, Catherine Titasey, Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, Frank Moorhouse, George Megalogenis, Janette Turner Hospital, Krissy Kneen, Literary prizes, Louise Fox, Matthew Condon, Neil Grant, Peter Rose, Queensland Literary Awards, Queensland Premiers' Literary Award, Rob Brooks, Robin De Crespigny, Ros Bates, Siv Parker, Sue Smith, The Conversation2 Comments on New Queensland literary award
Bronwyn Lea is the author of four books of poems: Flight Animals; The Wooden Cat and Other Poems; The Other Way Out; and most recently The Deep North: A Selection of Poems published by George Braziller Inc. in 2013. Her poems are widely anthologised, appearing most recently in Thirty Australian Poets, Australian Poetry Since 1788, Sixty Classic Australian Poems, and The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry.
As Poetry Editor at the University of Queensland Press her list included award-winning titles by Australia's most distinguished poets – David Malouf, John Tranter, Laurie Duggan, John Kinsella, and many others.
Bronwyn reviews poetry, fiction and non-fiction for a number of literary pages, and she is a Politics and Society columnist at The Conversation.
She lives in Brisbane and teaches literature and writing at the University of Queensland.
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Bronwyn Lea Blog at WordPress.com.