Qld Literary Awards 2023 full list: The Jaguar takes out top prize

A collection of poems about the death of the author’s father has taken one of the state’s top literary prizes.

Sarah Holland-Batt’s The Jaguar has taken out the top prize at the 2023, Queensland Literary Awards. Picture: Steve Pohlner

A collection of poems about the death of the author’s father has taken one of the state’s top literary prizes.

The Jaguar, by Queensland author Sarah Holland-Batt, was written as she watched her father succumb to Parkinson’s disease, and has now won the $25,000 Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance.

The collection also won the 2023 Stella Prize earlier this year and was described by the judges as lyrical and compassionate.

“The Jaguar is a moving exploration of family dynamics, ageing, memory, desire, nature, and art, combined with a passionate rage about our care of our elders. It is a hopeful and optimistic call for change,” they said.

“Technically brilliant and experimental, this collection is intelligent, accessible, nuanced and finely balanced.”

A total of $238,500 in prize money was awarded across the 12 Queensland Literary Award categories that included fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and published and unpublished work.

Gudanji/Wakaja woman Debra Dank won $15,000 for The University of Queensland Non-Fiction Book Award for We Come with This Place.

The judges applauded “the simple beauty of the language,” as Dank “takes us into the world of her childhood, into her family and onto her Country.”

“The wrenching emotional power of the story, and its deep insights make this book a classic.”

QLD LITERARY AWARDS

■ Queensland Premier’s Award

The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt

■ Queensland Writers Fellowships

Al Campbell for her novel project Door 64 

B.R. Dionysius for his poetry project The Eromanga Sea 

Melanie Saward for her novel project The Next Chapter 

■ Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Awards 

Jasmin McGaughey 

Jonathan O’Brien 

■ The University of Queensland Fiction Book Award 

Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright

■ The University of Queensland Non-Fiction Book Award 

We Come With This Place by Debra Dank

■ Children’s Book Award 

Waiting For The Storks by Katrina Nannestad

■ Griffith University Young Adult Book Award 

Completely Normal (And Other Lies) by Biffy James

■ University of Southern Queensland Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection 

Women I Know by Katerina Gibson (Scribner Australia) 

■ Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection 

Harvest Lingo by Lionel Fogarty

■ David Unaipon Award for an Emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Writer 

Maria van Neerven for her poetry manuscript To Give Them a Voice

■ Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer

Steve Minon for his novel manuscript First Name Second Name

■ The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award

Sita Walker for her book The God Of No Good

Originally published as Qld Literary Awards 2023 full list: The Jaguar takes out top prize