The 2023 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards have been recently announced, with winners coming from both established and emerging writers. Outstanding literature was on offer across the Award’s six literary category’s, with the collected works exploring themes of family, culture, Country and belonging and all testament to the strength of contemporary Australian writing.
Fiction
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
A novel about the relationship between life and art, and between language and the inner world - how difficult it is to speak truly, to know and be known by another, and how much power and friction lies in the unsaid, especially between a mother and daughter. This is an elegant and subtle exploration of the mysteries of our relationships to others. A mother and daughter travel from abroad to meet in Tokyo: they walk along the canals through the autumn evenings, escape the typhoon rains, share meals in small cafes and restaurants, and visit galleries to see some of the city’s most radical modern art. All the while, they talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes, and objects, about family, distance, and memory. But uncertainties abound. Who is really speaking here is it only the daughter? And what is the real reason behind this elliptical, perhaps even spectral journey? At once a careful reckoning and an elegy, this text questions whether any of us speak a common language, which dimensions can contain love, and what claim we have to truly know another’s inner world.
Non-fiction
My Father and Other Animals by Sam Vincent
Sam Vincent is a twenty-something writer in the inner suburbs, scrabbling to make ends meet, when he gets a call from his mother: his father has stuck his hand into a woodchipper, but 'not to worry - it wasn't like that scene in Fargo or anything'. When Sam returns to the family farm to help out, his life takes a new and unexpected direction. Whether castrating calves or buying a bull - or knocking in a hundred fence posts by hand when his dad hides the post-driver - Sam's farming apprenticeship is an education in grit and shit. But there are victories, too: nurturing a fig orchard to bloom; learning to read the land; joining forces with Indigenous elders to protect a special site. Slowly, Sam finds himself thinking differently about the farm, about his father and about his relationship with both. By turns affecting, hilarious and utterly surprising, this memoir melds humour and fierce honesty in an unsentimental love letter. It's about belonging, humility and regeneration - of land, family and culture. What passes from father to son on this unruly patch of earth is more than a livelihood; it is a legacy.
Young adult literature
The Greatest Thing by Sarah Winifred Searle
A young adult graphic novel about the life-saving power of teen friendships finds Winifred starting her first day of sophomore year without her two best (and only) friends, who have transferred to a private school, but she soon bonds with two offbeat students, Oscar and April, and must learn to navigate a secret that threatens to destroy her newfound friendships.
Children's literature
Open Your Heart to Country by Jasmine Seymour
From the award-winning creator of Baby Business (2019) and Cooee Mittigar (2019) comes a stunning bilingual story of healing and belonging. Told in English and Dharug, Open Your Heart to Country is a moving account of reconnection to Country from a First Nations perspective. Sharing the nourishing power of returning home and being immersed in the language of Country, this picture book invites readers to reflect on the importance of place, not only for First Nations' peoples but for everyone. With exquisite illustrations and soft, lilting text, Open Your Heart to Country appeals to the very young, while sharing a deeper message for older readers. A book the whole family can enjoy.
Poetry
At the Altar of Touch by Gavin Yuan Gao
From the 2020 winner of the Thomas Shapcott Award comes a sophisticated, impressive, and rich collection of poetry that unpacks the complexity of family, grief, and cross-cultural and queer identity. A scintillating and exhilarating collection from an accomplished and distinctive new voice.
Born in Beijing, Gavin Yuan Gao is a genderqueer, bilingual immigrant poet who grew up in Beijing and Brisbane. They live in Brisbane and At the Altar of Touch is their first book.
Australian history
Unmaking Angas Downs by Shannyn Palmer
Unmaking Angas Downs traces a history of colonisation in Central Australia by tracking the rise and demise of a rural enterprise across half a century, as well as the complex and creative practices that transformed a cattle station into Country.
Shannyn Palmer is a community-engaged practitioner, researcher, and writer with a PhD in History from the ANU, living and working on the Ancestral lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. While living in Mparntwe and working with Aṉangu, recording the stories that form the foundation of this book, Shannyn worked for the Aṟa Iritija Project, travelling between seven communities in the southwest of Central Australia working with Aṉangu to develop and maintain the community-based archive.
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