Prime Minister’s Literary Awards shortlist announced

Books about famine, starvation, sex, graft and politics make the shortlists for the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

Rebecca Lim has been short-listed for a Prime Minister's Literary Award.

A novel that seeks to explain the impact of China’s brutal “great leap forward” on children and peasants has been short-listed for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky by Rebecca Lim (Allen & Unwin) is one of five books in the category for children, announced on Thursday.

 

The book is also being considered for the $50,000 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award, administered by James Cook University.

It considers the extreme hunger and death by starvation faced by millions of rural poor in China under the reign of Mao Zedong. It also tackles the impact of the White Australia policy on migrants from Asian backgrounds. The two main characters, Fu, who is thirteen, and Pei, who is younger, flee on a boat, headed for Australia, which is not prepared to welcome them.

The author’s own family came to Australia from China, and she was able to draw on documents from her family archive, among them a deportation order signed by Harold Holt, which was ultimately not enforced, which threatened her family’s sense of safety in Australia.

Creative Australia - the new name of the Australia Council - unveiled the shortlists for the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards across six categories on Thursday. The categories are fiction, non-fiction, young adult literature, children’s literature, poetry, and Australian history.

Bennelong and Phillip: A History Unravelled is the first joint biography of the two men whose relationship is foundational to the establishment of Australia

The history shortlist includes the first joint biography of Bennelong and Captain Arthur Phillip, titled Bennelong and Phillip: A History Unravelled, by Kate Fullagar. The Australian’s literary critic, Victoria Grieves Williams, described it as brave, audacious and exciting idea.

Also on the list, David Marr’s Killing for Country, described by our critic Richard King as “prodigiously researched and immaculately written.”

Graft: Motherhood, Family and a Year on the Land by Maggie MacKellar (Penguin Random House), which was named one of our chief literary critic Geordie Williamson’s best books of 2023, also made the shortlist, as did the controversial Welcome To Sex by Yumi Stynes and Melissa Kang, which rocketed to No.1 on the Amazon online sales charts after being pulled from the shelves at Big W.

Welcome to Sex was pulled from the shelves at Big W.

The prizes are the richest in the nation. CEO Adrian Collette said: “Stories are the heartbeat of our culture, connecting us to our past, illuminating our present and shaping our future. The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards celebrate the storytellers who enrich our lives with their creativity and outstanding talent.”

The winners will be announced on Thursday September 12 at a ceremony held at the National Library of Australia in Canberra. The winners and short-listed authors will share in a tax-free prize pool of $600,000, with the winner of each category receiving $80,000.

The shortlists include:

Australian History

Donald Horne: A Life in the Lucky Country by Ryan Cropp (La Trobe University Press)

Bee Miles By Rose Ellis (Allen & Unwin)

Bennelong and Phillip: A History Unravelled by Kate Fullagar (Scribner)

Killing for Country: A Family Story by David Marr (Black Inc)

Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law by Alecia Simmonds (La Trobe University Press)

Fiction

Anam by André Dao (Penguin Random House)

Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville (Text Publishing)

Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko (University of Queensland Press)

The Carnal Fugues by Catherine McNamara (Puncher and Wattmann)

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (Allen & Unwin)

Non-Fiction

Close to the Subject: Selected Works by Daniel Browning (Magabala Books)

Eventually Everything Connects by Sarah Firth (Allen & Unwin)

Graft: Motherhood, Family and a Year on the Land by Maggie MacKellar (Penguin Random House)

A Kind of Confession by Alex Miller (Allen & Unwin)

A Clear Flowing Yarra by Harry Saddler (Affirm Press)

Poetry

In the Photograph by Luke Beesley (Giramondo Publishing)

The Cyprian by Amy Crutchfield (Giramondo Publishing)

She is the Earth by Ali Cobby Eckermann (Magabala Books)

Golden Bridge: New Poems by Jennifer Maiden (Quemar Press)

The Drama Student by Autumn Royal (Giramondo Publishing)

Young Adult

Grace Notes by Karen Comer (Hachette Australia)

Welcome to Sex by Dr Melissa Kang and Yumi Stynes (Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing)

We Could Be Something by Will Kostakis (Allen & Unwin)

We Didn’t Think It Through by Gary Lonesborough (Allen & Unwin)

A Hunger of Thorns by Lili Wilkinson (Allen & Unwin)

Children’s Literature

Etta and the Shadow Taboo by Jared Field and Jeremy Worrall (Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing)

Ghost Book by Remy Lai (Allen & Unwin)

Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky by Rebecca Lim (Allen & Unwin)

Millie Mak the Maker by Alice Pung & Sher Rill Ng (HarperCollins Publishers)

Tamarra: A Story of Termites on Gurindji Country by Violet Wadrill; Topsy Dodd Ngarnjal; Leah Leaman; Cecelia Edwards; Cassandra Algy; Felicity Meakins; Briony Barr and Gregory Crocetti (Hardie Grant Explore)