Small Press Network Book of the Year Award
or SPN Book of the Year Award
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
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History

Formally Most Underrated Book Award.

Any book released by an Small Press Network member publisher in the previous calendar year is eligible. The award is sponsored by the Australian Booksellers Association and ArtsHub.  (Source : Books + Publishing 18 August 2020)

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2023

Indexed selectively. Also shortlisted: Mabu Mabu: An Australian Kitchen Cookbook (Nornie Bero). Also receiving honourable mention: Lockdown (Chip Le Grand).
winner y separately published work icon Against Disappearance : Essays on Memory Leah Jing McIntosh (editor), Adolfo Aranjuez (editor), Neutral Bay : Pantera Press , 2022 24703370 2022 anthology essay 'In this collection of new essays from the Liminal & Pantera Press Nonfiction Prize longlist, First Nations writers and writers of colour bend and shift boundaries, query the past and envision new futures. They ask: How do we write or hold our former selves, our ancestries? How does where we come from connect to where we are headed? How do we tell the stories of those who have been diminished or ignored in the writing of history? How do we do justice to the lives they lived, or to the people they were? From the intricacies of trans becoming, to violences inflicted on stateless peoples, to complex inheritances and the intertwining of tradition, politics and place, this prescient collection challenges singular narratives about the past, offering testimony and prophecy alike.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2022

winner y separately published work icon Gravidity and Parity Eleanor Jackson , Sydney : Vagabond Press , 2021 21864927 2021 selected work poetry

'Gravidity and Parity explores the narrative opportunities of pregnancy loss, pregnancy and early motherhood set against the unfolding experience of the COVID 19 pandemic.

'With bleak humour, crisp language and the intricate realities of the body, Gravidity and Parity considers the natal taboo while documenting the strange, performance of life celebrated, mourned, connected and disconnected under lockdown.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2021

joint winner y separately published work icon Echoes Shu-Ling Chua , Sydney : Somekind Press , 2020 22546679 2020 selected work essay

'ECHOES is a curious and lyrical collection of personal essays from writer, essayist, critic and poet Shu-Ling Chua which references art and literature, pop culture and nostalgia. It gathers small joys, from a figure-hugging ‘disco dress’ to learning to sing Koo Mei’s ‘Bu Liao Qing’ 不了情 to the swish of washing machines. And asks: what does one unknowingly inherit?

'In the title story, Echoes, inspired by old Chinese pop songs and their modern versions, Shu-Ling unexpectedly discovers past and present colliding despite the limits of language and translation and the gaps that remain there. 'Years later, I had presumed consuming the same cultural products would help me piece together her life. There is however a river—linguistic, cultural, historical—I cannot cross.'

'In (Im)material Inheritances, Shu-Ling considers glamour and the way we dress for the world, delighting in the feminine, while peering at old family photographs searching and longing for the material links with her mother and grandmother. And finally in To Fish for the Moon, Shu-Ling takes us on a watery journey from her share house washing machine to her great-grandparents' laundry business in Malaysia, to red date tea and a bathtub, examining the minute detail of our domestic lives, the habits and rituals, their origins and secrets, sorrows and delights, and shining a light on their place and meaning.' (Publication summary)

joint winner y separately published work icon We are Speaking in Code Tanya Vavilova , Sydney : Brio Books , 2020 18436087 2020 selected work essay

'We Are Speaking in Code explores difference and deviance in the everyday through the lenses of mental illness, queerness and migrant identity. Weaving personal anecdotes with reflections on trauma, psychology and contemporary relationships this collection of essays catalogues, reconsiders and unravels ideas of belonging, identity and the way we operate in the world.

Opening with a visit ‘home’ to Moscow where she speaks an alphabet-soup Russian, Vavilova tries to connect with her mother and grandmother. The titular essay starts one of the central conversations of the book; what does it mean to be a migrant whose identity is impossible in the land of their forebears and highly complicated in their home. Vavilova also tackles the millennial preoccupations of finding meaningful paid work, navigating dating in the tech age and the perils of building a living as an artist.

'Bridging social, emotional and geographic distances, Vavilova’s essays look for ways to live on the edges, with grace, humour and lucid rage.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2020

winner y separately published work icon Forgotten Corners : Essays in Search of an Island's Soul P. R. Hay , North Hobart : Walleah Press , 2019 18862974 2019 selected work essay

'Pete Hay is pre-eminent among the guardians of Tasmania’s island’s spirit, his fierce intelligence and compassionate heart resisting those who would ravage, exploit and appropriate its natural beauty, cultural creativity and fraught history for profit and power. Animals and ancestors, people and plants, the lost and the loved, the humus and the human, the artist and the artefact, the books and the birds, the sadness and the stillness, the past and the possible, the humour and the horror all find voice in 'Forgotten Corners'. ' (Publication summary)

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