2011 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards Winners

• Fiction Book Award
• Emerging Queensland Author—Manuscript Award
• Unpublished Indigenous Writer—Arts Queensland David Unaipon Award
• Non-Fiction Book Award
• History Book—Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland Award
• Children's Book—Mary Ryan's Award
• Young Adult Book Award
• Science Writer Award
• Poetry Collection—Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award
• Australian Short Story Collection—Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award
• Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate—The Harry Williams Award
• Film Script—Screen Queensland Award
• Drama Script (Stage)—Griffith University Creative Writing Program Award
• Television Script—QUT Creative Industries Award

Fiction Book Award

Amanda Lohrey for Reading Madame Bovary
Black Inc.

Amanda Lohrey’s Reading Madame Bovary is a refined and beautifully crafted work. This collection of stories—the ‘best of Lohrey’ from the last 15 years—is highly literary and technically brilliant, and also enjoyably readable. At times subtly experimental, but always wise and astute, these stories explore the dilemmas of modern life with sensitivity and passion. This book exemplifies the rich texture of Australian literature and the sophistication of literary talent.

Emerging Queensland Author— Manuscript Award

Annah Lee Faulkner for The Beloved

The Beloved is a witty and engaging family drama. It balances a subtle, charming portrait of the artist as a young woman against an acutely observed evocation of family relationships, in particular the complex dynamic between mother and daughter. The narrative moves with vigorous energy, effortlessly sustaining humour, pathos and drama. Through it all, the voice of the narrator, Roberta, sparkles with freshness and authenticity as she recounts her coming-of-age story with a winning charm. Blending the true-to-life power of a memoir with the craft and entertainment of a novel, this is an accomplished piece of writing, reflective of great talent.

Unpublished Indigenous Writer—Arts Queensland David Unaipon Award

Dylan Coleman for ‘Mazin’ Grace

Heart-rending, provocative and funny, ‘Mazin’ Grace is the story of a young Aboriginal girl’s quest to understand her identity. Grace’s determination, curiosity and intelligence bounce off every page, as she pieces together clues that might lead to her father and tries to find her place in a community that rejects her for reasons she doesn’t understand. This narrative captures the essence of what it was like for a young girl growing up on the Koonibba Lutheran Mission in South Australia. Using a mix of both Aboriginal English and Kokatha, Dylan Coleman eloquently expresses the emotions and experiences of Grace as a child and then as an adult. Sharply realised, with an authentic voice and strong narrative drive, ‘Mazin’ Grace is a fantastic piece of writing.

Non-Fiction Book Award

Mark McKenna for An Eye for Eternity: The life of Manning Clark
The Miegunyah Press

Manning Clark's life has long been the subject of other books and much comment. However, Clark's complicated, difficult, driven and creative genius emerges from this well written and compelling piece by Mark McKenna, giving readers a rich portrayal of his personal life and times.

History Book—Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland Award

Alan Powell for Northern Voyagers: Australia's monsoon coast in maritime history
Australian Scholarly Publishing

In this superb work of synthesis, Alan Powell rebalances the narrative of Australian history with his focus on northern Australia. He avoids a parochial view by sweeping his focus from north Queensland to the Kimberley and always acknowledges the contingency of northern development on wider imperial and later southern Australian mercantile and communication needs. This is a great work enlivened by recent developments in race relations and wartime historiography that challenges the reader to understand Australian history within a wider framework of world and regional history.

Children's Book—Mary Ryan's Award

Michael Gerard Bauer for Just a Dog
Omnibus Books

Michael Gerard Bauer has used a consummate, yet understated, blend of humour and compassion to create the tale of a dog, Mister Mosely (Moe), and his human family. We meet Moe as a puppy when he becomes part of Corey’s family. Using a structure of interlinked stories to create a novel, Bauer develops Moe, Corey and the family’s rich and authentic relationships throughout times of intense sadness and difficulty, as well as times of celebration and joy. The writing shows an affinity with ordinary people, making them special. Children will understand and appreciate patience and hope more deeply after reading this fine book and discover that ‘a story doesn’t stop being true just because you stop telling it’.

Young Adult Book Award

Barry Jonsberg for Being Here
Allen & Unwin

This is an intriguing psychological drama about Leah Cartwright, a girl whose childhood is blighted by the suicide of her father, and her mother’s obsessively protective and religious reaction. This amounts to mental and physical cruelty towards her daughter; however, Leah finds comfort, first in her books and then in Adam, who becomes her one true love. Although her decision to abandon her dreams in order to placate her mother leaves her emotionally bereft, it is the power of the imagination which offers her a lifelong reprieve from reality. In contrast, there is a gripping contemporary framing narrative where the girl, now named Mrs Cartwright, and an elderly resident of a nursing home, are visited by 16-year-old Carly. These sections are beautifully crafted, Mrs Cartwright’s acerbic comments to Carly are often very humorous, and the relationship which develops between them is warm and moving. This is a most impressive novel which stays with, and haunts the reader long after it concludes.

Science Writer Award

Richard Smith for Voyage to the Planets—Episodes 1, 2 and 3 (Mars, Jupiter and Saturn)
Essential Media and Entertainment

Worlds literally beyond our own are brought to life in this vivid and enchanting television series. Viewers are drawn into the romance and wonder of space exploration, through astonishing imagery, descriptions and details of the planets. With a style that is alluring and accessible for a wide audience, the filmmakers effectively communicate the passion of scientists working in this field and display a masterful command of the topic.

Poetry Collection—Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award

John Tranter for Starlight: 150 poems
University of Queensland Press

This book can be seen as the culmination of John Tranter’s middle career, a period marked by explorations of the ways in which poems can be generated. The most important poem of the collection is probably the first, ’Anaglyph‘, which already seems like the major Australian poem of this century so far. Here, an answer is written to Ashbery’s ‘Clepsydra’, whereby the original is evacuated so that only the first and last words of each line remain and the new poem is written by retaining them. Although this description of Starlight: 150 poems makes it seem formally obsessive, it is still a book of poems that has a lot to say and ‘Anaglyph’—in part a parody, in part a homage and in part an answer to an early poem by Tranter’s great middle-period mentor—is very much a poem about those modern obsessions of textuality and influence.

Australian Short Story Collection—Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award

Amanda Lohrey for Reading Madame Bovary
Black Inc.

Amanda Lohrey’s Reading Madame Bovary confirms the author’s ongoing importance as a writer who seeks to understand ethical conflicts and the world of action alongside questions about faith and shared spiritual belonging. The author finds her characters at the brink of small disasters and prods them to unlock the mystery at the heart of the mundane. ’Fluctuat nec meritur‘, one of her protagonists says, ’we are tossed by the waves but we do not sink‘. The collection is marked by interiority, intelligence and the relaxed assurance of a master at work.

Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate—The Harry Williams Award

Anna Krien for Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania's Forests
Black Inc.

In this finely crafted book, Anna Krien introduces readers to the many participants in the fight over Tasmania’s forests. She interviews loggers, environmentalists, politicians, ‘ferals’ and other Tasmanians who have felt the impact of the battle to tell a tale of power, corruption, short-term policy making and bitter community division. Fights about Tasmania’s forests have not been confined to the island state. The Gordon-below-Franklin Dam, Australia’s first Green party, Tasmanian forestry workers’ support for John Howard in 2004 and the Gunns’ proposed pulp mill have all had a significant impact on mainland politics. This book contributes to a long term debate over the relationship between economic development and the environment that is only likely to intensify.

Film Script—Screen Queensland Award

Alice Addison for The Hunter
Porchlight Films

This thriller takes us inside the now universal story of conflict between environmentalists and local communities concerned to maintain things as they are, and the way in which the often violent dynamic between these 2 groups can be exploited by cynical external forces. Martin David comes to the isolated forests of Tasmania ostensibly to conduct Tasmanian Devil research, but there is far more to his search than he claims. He is not only drawn into the lives of Lucy Armstrong, her daughter Sass, her mute young son Bike and their lost father, the ranger and environmentalist campaigner Jarrah Armstrong, but also the ideals and principles that drove Jarrah. As he comes to learn the truth, and the family suffers a terrible vengeance, he finds himself forced into a dreadful solution. This screenplay takes a dilemma that is familiar to us all, but leads us to a solution that none would willingly choose. It is finely written, compelling and never loses pace from the beginning.

Drama Script (Stage)—Griffith University Creative Writing Program Award

Daniel Keene for Life Without Me
Currency Press Pty Ltd

Life Without Me is a surrealist comedy set in a seedy hotel in the backstreets of Melbourne. A traveller or two straggle in blown by a fierce wind, the lift is unreliable, and the hotel clerk asks oddly disturbing questions. This is a place of ‘in-betweenness’, a limbo where what people have taken for granted as their identity is strangely undermined by things shifting from what they seem to what they are. If that sounds mysterious, so is this maturely crafted play that evokes an entire, but confining world almost in the manner of an Escher painting. The final act releases us from entrapment and takes us into a redemptive movement, a sense of a new and more honest beginning. Do we ever know who we really are? Or do we define ourselves by the opinions and expectations of others? In Daniel Keene’s universe, the choices we are given may be small, but this does not let us off the hook of discriminating between the comfortable lie and the inconvenient truth.

Television Script—QUT Creative Industries Award

Christopher Lee for Paper Giants: The birth of Cleo—Part 2
Southern Star John Edwards

This is superb writing and a cracker of a story. Christopher Lee captures the heart and soul of his characters and weaves them through the tumultuous seventies in Australia with tantalising historical snippets that add flavour to the mix and truth to the tone. Cleo changed women’s perception of themselves, and it went a long way to changing men’s perceptions of themselves and of women as well. This is the story of how, with the support of the gruff, brilliant, terrifying Kerry Packer, a young woman established the Cleo masthead and then went on to further success with The Women’s Weekly. The writer succeeds in taking us inside the mysterious alchemy of the relationship between Kerry and Ita, never once hinting at anything other than a deep personal and professional connection, and yet opening up that connection for the actors and the director to explore nuance and gesture that give the piece another subtle level of meaning and truth. This is a writer who not only can write great stories for television, but can write strongly for actors as well. This is a stand-out piece of writing for television.