It has been a huge year for UWA Publishing and WA literature in general, with more award recognition for two deeply Western Australian books announced today.
Extinctions by Josephine Wilson and Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow by Suzanne Falkiner have been shortlisted for the fiction and non-fiction categories of the 2017 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
This announcement follows Extinctions’ win of the 2017 Miles Franklin and Colin Roderick Awards. The book was published after it won UWA Publishing’s Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2016. Josephine Wilson wrote the book as part of her Creative Writing PhD at the University of Western Australia.
Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow is also intimately connected with UWA as it depicts the life and work of literary giant Randolph Stow, who won the Miles Franklin at 23 years old for his novel Tourmaline. Falkiner’s book was shortlisted for the 2017 National Biography Award, alongside fellow UWA Publishing book The Unknown Judith Wright by Georgina Arnott.
The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards are worth $80,000 each and will be announced in early December.