The Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards were announced last night - the same night as the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Among the many category winners were: Amanda Lohrey, who took out the Fiction Book Award for Reading Madame Bovary; Mark McKenna, whose biography of Manning Clark, An Eye for Eternity, took out the Non-Fiction Book Award (he also won the equivalent prize in the VPLA, making it two prizes in a night); and John Tranter’s Starlight took out the poetry category. Click here for a full list of winners.
The Queensland award winners were inadvertently released before the official announcement when a press release containing the winner’s names was sent to media outlets earlier yesterday. Many would have been impressed with Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s response: a second press release apologising for the mishap included a quote from Oscar Wilde: “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
Our awards wrap for today concludes with news of the release of the Booker Prize shortlist. The shortlisted books are: Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending; Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie; Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers; Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues; Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English; and AD Miller’s Snowdrops. Surprises include the omissionof Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child. For more comment, see the Guardian’s wrap.