2012 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards Announced

Posted July 23, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literary News / 0 Comments

The Winners of the 2012 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards were announced today in a ceremony in Canberra.  A big congratulation to the following winners;

  • Luke Davies won the award for Poetry
  • Robert Newton’s When We Were Two won the award for YA Fiction
  • Mark McKenna’s An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark won the Non-Fiction award
  • Bill Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth won the Australian History award

And the winner of the award we are all interested in; best work of Fiction for 2012 goes to Gillian Mears for Foal’s Bread. Gillian was up against some great books including; All That I Am by Anna Funder, Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville, Autumn Laing by Alex Miller and Forecast: Turbulence by Janette Turner Hospital.

The most Interesting part of the award ceremony for me was when Luke Davies used his time to criticise Campbell Newman for scrapping the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, by saying “The clear message from Campbell Newman’s wrong-headed decision to eliminate the Queensland Premier’s awards is that reading is simply not important, not valuable to the greater culture and that celebrating excellence even less so”.

Well done to all the winners, each of them was also awarded $80,000 as part of the award.


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