The long-awaited shortlist for the 2013 ACT Book of the Year Award was announced today by ACT Minister for the Arts, Joy Burch, but you’ll have to wait until later in the month for the actual winner.
From a shortlist of 28 submissions, the finalists for the $10,000 prize are Frank Bongiorno for “The Sex Lives of Australians: A History”, Paul Daley for “Canberra”, Nigel Featherstone for “I’m Ready Now”, and S.K. Kelen for “Island Earth, New and Selected Poems.”
Daley is a Walkley award winning journalist and author whose book shows that there is more to the Capital than politics.
Kelen’s poems have drawn attention for their quirky titles and their engagement with popular culture.
Featherstone’s book traces the journey of Lynne Gleeson who, following the death of her husband, travels from her grand ancestral Hobart home to visit her son Gordon in Sydney.
Bongiorno’s nine-chapter book is an account of the sex lives of Australians from the earliest years of European settlement until the present.
The award, the minister said, recognised quality contemporary published literary works by ACT writers and was one of the many ways in which the ACT Government supported literature in the ACT.
Previous winners have included Bill Gammage, Marion Halligan and Nicholas Drayson.
More information at arts.act.gov.au
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