Today they announced the nominees for the National Biography Award. I’m pleased to see that although my focus here is on fiction, I’ve reviewed three of them:
- Reckoning, by Magda Szubanski, see Louise’s review at A Strong Belief in Wicker
- Comrade Ambassador: Whitlam’s Beijing Envoy, by Stephen FitzGerald, listen to an interview with the author at Radio National.
- Battarbee and Namatjira by Martin Edmond, see my review
- Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather by Karen Lamb, see my review
- Mannix by Brenda Niall, see my review
-
Bearing Witness: The remarkable life of Charles Bean, by Peter Rees, follow links at Honest History to combined reviews
This year’s winner will be announced on August 8. The winner will receive $25,000, and the nominees $1000.
Update 7/7/16 The Australian Literature Society (ALS) has awarded its Gold Medal to Brenda Niall, for Mannix. The ALS Gold Medal is awarded every year for an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year. Of interest is that (I think) this is the first time that the award has gone to a work of non-fiction. I say this because I don’t recognise any other NF words among previous winners, but that might just be because although I recognise (and have read) a great many of the award winners listed at Wikipedia, obviously I don’t know them all.
Update, later that day: No, I’m wrong…Geoffrey Blainey won the ALS medal in 1964 for The Rush That Never Ended, a History of Australian Mining, and Drusilla Modjeska won it in 2000 for Stravinsky’s Lunch.
Thanks to Adventures in Biography for the heads-up, follow this link to find out more about this award and the shortlist.
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
The ones you’ve read would seem t be strong contenders?
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By: BookerTalk on July 5, 2016
at 6:39 pm
Yes, I would think so… though Reckoning is very highly thought of and would be a popular choice. Of the three I’ve read, I admit to admiring Mannix most but that is because Brenda Niall is our pre-eminent biographer and as I’ve said before she could write a biography of just about anyone and it would be brilliant. She has a gift for writing…
OTOH Battarbee is such a gorgeous book, I learned so much from it and it was a real pleasure to read, and then Karen Lamb’s book was about one of our most interesting authors ever!
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By: Lisa Hill on July 5, 2016
at 7:01 pm
Have you read Niall’s True North? About the Durack sisters? I didn’t think it was as strong as her earlier works (although those earlier works did set the bar extraordinarily high!)
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By: MST on July 5, 2016
at 7:33 pm
I’ve got it, but I haven’t read it yet. I’ve only read three bios this year, something I must rectify before long….
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By: Lisa Hill on July 5, 2016
at 9:11 pm
Thanks for the link!
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By: MST on July 7, 2016
at 7:32 pm