Cory Taylor - Pacific region winner in Commonwealth Book Prize for Me and Mr Booker

• by: Harry Brumpton
• From:The Courier-Mail
• May 23, 20129

PAGE TURNER: Cory Taylor with the debut novel that won her a spot in the Commonwealth Book Prize finals. Source: The Courier-Mail

BRISBANE writer Cory Taylor is the Pacific region winner in this year's Commonwealth Book Prize, announced last week.

Taylor won the title for her debut novel Me and Mr Booker, published by Text earlier this year.
"To have this kind of recognition for your work is exciting for any writer, given that writing is so much about confidence in the worth of what you're trying to do," Taylor said.
"And to be recognised out of a field of such quality and diversity is especially thrilling."
Taylor will go up against the regional winners of Asia, Canada and Europe, Africa and the Caribbean, with the ultimate winner to be announced on June 8.
The announcement of the Commonwealth Writers' regional winners comes less than a month before Australia's most prestigious book award, the Miles Franklin, is announced and in the wake of the Australian Book Industry Awards.

Courier-Mail contributor William McInnes and his late wife Sarah Watt won the general non-fiction category for their co-authored memoir Worse Things Happen at Sea at the ABIAs, held in Sydney last Friday.
McInnes accepted the award just a week after he was also guest speaker at the Chief Minister's Northern Territory History Book Award - an award handed out to fellow Brisbane writer Anthony Cooper for his book Darwin Spitfires: The Real Battle for Australia.
Meanwhile, the general ABIA Book of the Year went to Anna Funder for her first novel All That I Am, which received the Literary Fiction Book of the Year. The same novel won the Indie Book of the Year in April, and is one of five shortlisted for this year's Miles Franklin Award, announced on June 20 in Brisbane at State Library Queensland.