Author pledges prizemoney to help family out of homelessness

First Nations writer Melissa Lucashenko has scooped her third major Australian literary award in as many weeks, now eight in total, for her epic Edenglassie.

The acclaimed author was named on Wednesday night winner of the $40,000 Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award, celebrating research-based literature. It brings her total prizemoney for the work to almost $200,000.

Lucashenko, who is of Goorie and European descent, said she intends to use most of the proceeds of the Nib prize to help a family member out of homelessness and others struggling in her community.

Author Melissa Lucashenko has won the Waverley Council NIB award with her novel Edenglassie.Credit: Janie Barrett

“I can pay my bills and I have a roof over my head but because I adhere to Aboriginal values, I will be sharing the love, as and when I can because the government is more interested funding, or pretending to fund, AUKUS and fossil fuel production than making sure people are properly housed,” Lucashenko said.

Almost 25,000 people, or one-fifth of the total number of people experiencing homelessness in Australia, were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, according to 2021 census data.

Of those, 60 per cent were living in “severely” crowded dwellings, 19 per cent were in supported accommodation, the remainder in improvised dwellings, tents, sleeping out or staying temporarily with other households.

“It’s anathema to me as an Aboriginal person to think I might have money sitting in the bank while people close to me can’t afford their medications or have an empty fridge,” Lucashenko said. “That doesn’t make sense to me at all.”

It follows author Richard Flanagan’s refusal last week to accept almost $100,000 for a British literature award until the prize’s sponsor releases a plan to divest from fossil fuels.

Researched and written over four years, Edenglassie is a multi-generational saga that jumps between 2024 and 1855, a period in Brisbane’s history when populations of white and black were evenly balanced, and the Indigenous “freedom fighter”, Dundalli, was to be executed for leading settler attacks.

Judges described Edenglassie as “brilliant”: “Its prose sparks with electricity and the characters linger long in the reader’s mind,” said publisher Julia Carlomagno. “It is a book that expands understanding. It takes readers on a journey involving the heart, the mind and the eye.”

It’s the eighth major award for Lucashenko’s seventh novel. Her sixth, Too Much Lip, won the 2019 Miles Franklin Award.

So far this year, Edenglassie has been named winner of the ARA Historical Novel Prize, Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award, the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction and the 2024 Queensland Premier’s Award for a work of state significance. It will be eligible for the NSW Premier’s award next year.

Lucashenko is in the early stages of writing a crime comedy set in NSW’s northern rivers. Titled Blood on the Tiles, it’s a murder set among members of a Scrabble club.

Singer-songwriter Deborah Conway took home the $4000 Nib People’s Choice Prize for her memoir, Book of Life.

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