The Age has announced the shortlists for its Book of the Year prizes. The prizes will be awarded to books in three categories with $10,000 each (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) with an overall prize to be chosen from among the three, worth an additional $10,000.
The shortlists are:
Fiction
Like Being a Wife, Catherine Harris (Vintage)
The Mary Smokes Boys, Patrick Holland (Transit Lounge)
Indelible Ink, Fiona McGregfor (Scribe)
Bright and Distant Shores, Dominic Smith (Allen & Unwin)
Bereft, Chris Womersely (Scribe)
Non-Fiction
Sydney, Delia Falconer (New South)
A Three-Cornered Life: The Historian W. K. Hancock, Jim Davidson (UNSW Press)
When It Rains, Maggie MacKellar (Vintage)
When Horse Became Saw, Anthony Macris (Viking)
The Many Worlds of R.H. Mathews: In Search of an Australian Anthropologist, Martin Thomas (Allen & Unwin)
Poetry
Sly Mongose, Ken Bolton (Puncher &Wattmann)
Supermodernprayerbook, Susan Bradley Smith (Salt)
This Floating World, Libby Hart (5 Islands Press)
Porch Music, Cameron Lowe (Whitmore Press)
Starlight: 150 Poems, John Tranter (University of Queensland Press)
The winners will be announced at the opening event of the Melbourne Writers Festival, which will also feature a keynote address by US novelist Jonathan Franzen.