Brigid Magner’s book Locating Australian Literary Memory (Anthem 2019) has been shortlisted for the 2021 Walter McRae Russell Award for the best work of literary scholarship on an Australian subject published 2019-2020.
Ronnie Scott’s novel The Adversary (Hamish Hamilton 2020) has been shortlisted for the 2021 Australian Literature Society (ALS) Gold Medal. The Adversary joins a list of shortlisted titles including The Rain Heron (Robbie Arnott, Text); Cadaver Dog (Luke Best, UQP); The Animals in That Country (Laura Jean MacKay, Scribe); Song of the Crocodile (Nardi Simpson, Hachette) and Throat (Ellen van Neerven, UQP).
Established in 1929, the ALS Gold Medal is presented annually by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) for ‘the best contribution to literature in Australia’ in the preceding calendar year. Last year’s ALS Gold Medal winner was Charmaine Papertalk Green for her poetry collection Nganajungu Yagu (Cordite).
This year’s winner will be announced in an online celebration to open Australia’s Triennial Literary Studies Convention on 20 July. The announcement, and the subsequent Barry Andrews Memorial Address, to be delivered by Behrouz Boochani, are both open to the public.
And last but not least, Jessica Wilkinson is the recent recipient of grants from the Australia Council and Creative Victoria that will keep the mighty journal, Rabbit, pulsing for a further two years. If this was not enough, but her essay ‘Leavings’ has just been shortlisted for the prestigious 2021 Calibre Essay Prize.
Literary scholarship, the contemporary novel, poetic biography, and the essay? Is there anything the non/fiction lab can’t do?
Congratulations, Jess, Ronnie, and Brigid. You do us proud.
Words & Images wrangled by Peta Murray
non/fictionLab is supported by Writing & Publishing @RMIT
