Literary Awards: Treechange paves way for award-winning novel
A move to Queensland’s Scenic Rim helped pave the way for author Tabitha Bird to pen The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year.
QLD News
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AN author’s treechange to Boonah in the Scenic Rim provided the setting for the novel that won The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year at last night’s Queensland Literary Awards.
Tabitha Bird’s A Lifetime of Impossible Days, a magical tale of family heartbreak and healing, is the debut book for the 43-year-old, who moved from Brisbane with her husband and three sons seven years ago and found the right place to bring her work-in-progress to life.
The book, which sprang from a writing exercise during counselling over her own childhood trauma, resonated strongly with readers, with overall voting for the award up 40 per cent on last year.
The COVID-safe online ceremony also awarded the richest prize, the $25,000 Queensland’s Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance, to Cairns author Joe Gorman for Heartland: How Rugby League Explains Queensland.
The judges said the book was a superbly written insight into the State of Origin series.