Leigh Sales has won her third Walkley Award, taking home the 2019 Walkley Book Award for Any Ordinary Day at a ceremony held at the ICC in Sydney last night.
The Walkley Book Award celebrates Australian non-fiction and is part of the Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism. Leigh’s book was chosen from a shortlist of three that included See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill and Rusted Off by Gabrielle Chan.
The judges said:
“In a writing world steeped in memoir, Leigh Sales turned her personal story into journalism. Any Ordinary Day takes her own traumatic moment as a starting point, using it to inform these remarkable conversations about loss, grief, faith, trauma, resilience and the simple power of indefatigable humanity.”
Other major 2019 Walkley winners include Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon, who took home the Gold Walkley Award for their Herald Sun investigation into the ‘Lawyer X’ informer scandal in Melbourne. Dowsley and Carlyon will be releasing a book on the scandal, Lawyer X, early next year.
Stan Grant (Australia Day) also won the 2019 Walkley Documentary Award for The Australian Dream, an examination of AFL player Adam Goodes’ experiences with race, identity, and belonging.
For more information about the Walkley Awards, click here.
Read our review of Any Ordinary Day here and listen to our podcast with Leigh below!
Any Ordinary Day
Blindsides, Resilience and What Happens After the Worst Day of Your Life
The day that turns a life upside down usually starts like any other, but what happens the day after? Dual Walkley Award-winner Leigh Sales investigates how ordinary people endure the unthinkable.
As a journalist, Leigh Sales often encounters people experiencing the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of the media. But one particular string of bad news stories – and a terrifying brush with her own mortality – sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable...
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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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2019 Walkley Book Award Shortlist announced 
REVIEW: Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales
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