See all the winners of the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards!

The winners of the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards have just been revealed at a ceremony in Parliament House!

The Awards were established in 2008, with the goal of rewarding the outstanding work of local writers and their contribution to the cultural and intellectual life of the nation.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who was briefly present at the ceremony today, said, “Congratulations to the outstanding winners of this year’s Awards. We are fortunate to have such remarkable authors, poets, illustrators, creators and historians committed to bringing Australian stories to life.”

The winners are decided jointly by the Prime Minister and a series of category-based judging panels. The panel members read all of the books submitted to their category and make their recommendations for the longlist, shortlist and winner to the Prime Minister, who is given the final say.

All of the shortlisted authors received a medal, while the winning authors will share a total prize pool of $600,000.

Scroll down to see all of the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards winners!

Fiction

The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones

The art historian Noah Glass, having just returned from a trip to Sicily, is discovered floating face down in the swimming pool at his Sydney apartment block. His adult children, Martin and Evie, must come to terms with the shock of their father’s death. But a sculpture has gone missing from a museum in Palermo, and Noah is a suspect. The police are investigating.

None of it makes any sense. Martin sets off to Palermo in search of answers about his father’s activities, while Evie moves into Noah’s apartment, waiting to learn where her life might take her. Retracing their father’s steps in their own way, neither of his children can see the path ahead.

Buy it here

Non-Fiction

Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra: 1955-1964 by Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell

Half the Perfect World tells the story of the post-war international artist community that formed on the Greek island of Hydra. Most famously, it included renowned singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and his partner Marianne Ihlen, as well as many other artists and writers including the Australian literary couple, Charmian Clift and George Johnston, who fostered this fabled colony.

Drawing on many previously unseen letters, manuscripts and diaries, and richly illustrated by the eyewitness photographs of LIFE magazine photo-journalist James Burke, Half the Perfect World reveals the private lives and relationships of the Hydra expatriates. It charts the promise of a creative life that drew many of them to the island, and documents the fracturing of the community as it came under pressure from personal ambitions and wider social changes. For all the unrealised youthful ambitions, internal strife and personal tragedy that attends this story, the authors nonetheless find that the example of these writers, dreamers and drifters continues to resonate and inspire.

Buy it here

Australian History

The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History by Meredith Lake

In this surprising and revelatory history of the Bible in Australia, Meredith Lake gets under the skin of a text that’s been read, wrestled with, preached and tattooed, and believed to be everything from a resented imposition to the very Word of God.

The Bible in Australia explores how in the hands of Bible-bashers, immigrants, suffragists, evangelists, unionists, writers, artists and Indigenous Australians, the Bible has played a contested but defining role in this country.

Buy it here

Poetry

Sun Music: New and Selected Poems by Judith Beveridge

Judith Beveridge is one of Australia most acclaimed poets, taught in high schools and universities, winner of the NSW and Victorian Premiers’ Awards, a highly regarded critic, editor and teacher of poetry. Sun Music is a definitive edition of her best-known and most important poems

Sun Music collects Beveridge’s best poems published over a thirty-year period, from 1987 to 2017. She has selected the poems from her award-winning collections, The Domesticity of Giraffes, Accidental Grace, Wolf Notes and Storm and Honey, and included 33 new poems which build on and enhance her previous work. Beveridge is an exacting poet, precise and controlled, and her formal discipline gives added intensity to her expression of emotion.

Buy it here

Children’s Fiction

His Name Was Walter by Emily Rodda

‘Once upon a time, in a dark city far away, there lived a boy called Walter, who had nothing but his name to call his own …’

The handwritten book, with its strangely vivid illustrations, has been hidden in the old house for a long, long time. Tonight, four kids and their teacher will find it. Tonight, at last, the haunting story of Walter and the mysterious, tragic girl called Sparrow will be read – right to the very end …

From one of Australia’s most renowned children’s authors comes an extraordinary story within a story – a mystery, a prophecy, a long-buried secret. And five people who will remember this night as long as they live.

Buy it here

Young Adult Fiction

The Things That Will Not Stand by Michael Gerard Bauer

Sebastian is at a university open day with his best friend Tolly when he meets a girl. Her name is Frida, and she’s edgy, caustic and funny. She’s also a storyteller, but the stories she tells about herself don’t ring true, and as their surprising and eventful day together unfolds, Sebastian struggles to sort the fact from the fiction.

But how much can he expect Frida to share in just one day? And how much of his own self and his own secrets will he be willing to reveal in return?

Buy it here

Congratulations to all of the winners of the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards!

Find out more about the Awards here

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Olivia Fricot

Olivia Fricot (she/her) is Booktopia's Senior Content Producer and editor of the Booktopian blog. She has too many plants and not enough bookshelves, and you can usually find her reading, baking, or talking to said plants. She is pro-Oxford comma.

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