Aussie Book News

Awards: Miles Franklin Shortlist; Aussie ABA Awards

The shortlist has been released for the $60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist, Australia's prestigious prize honoring a novel "of the highest literary merit and which must present Australian life in any of its phases."

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the list was announced "amid controversy that was, unusually, not about the prize itself. With uncertainty about the future of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards and budget cuts to the arts, some in the book world are discussing whether to walk out, turn their backs or throw a shoe when Prime Minister Tony Abbott speaks next Friday at the Australian Book Industry Awards dinner in Sydney."

The winner will be named June 26. This year's Miles Franklin finalists are:

Eyrie by Tim Winton
The Swan Book by Alexis Wright
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
My Beautiful Enemy by Cory Taylor

---
In other news from Down Under, at last night's banquet at the Australian Booksellers Association conference in Melbourne, the following awards were made:

ABA Nielsen BookData Booksellers' Choice: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
ABA Text Publishing Bookseller of the Year: Jenny Barry, Books Plus, Bathurst, New South Wales
ABA Penguin Random House Young Bookseller of the Year: Helene Byfield, Books Kinokuniya, Sydney
ABA Guild Insurance Elizabeth Riley Fellowship for Children's Bookselling: Julie Melville, State Library of Queensland Library Shop, Brisbane
Lifetime members:
Fiona Stager, co-owner of Avid Reader, Brisbane
Barbara Horgan, co-owner of Shearer's Bookshop, Leichhardt, New South Wales

via Shelf Awareness