Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance (2015-)
Subcategory of Queensland Literary Awards
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Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2024

winner y separately published work icon Edenglassie Melissa Lucashenko , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2023 26374920 2023 single work novel historical fiction

'When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice.

'Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Grannie Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives.

'In this brilliant epic, Melissa Lucashenko torches Queensland’s colonial myths, while reimagining an Australian future.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2023

winner y separately published work icon The Jaguar Sarah Holland-Batt , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2022 23603765 2022 selected work poetry

'A stunning new collection from one of Australia's finest poets - her most impressive work yet.

'With electrifying boldness and fearlessness of vision, Sarah Holland-Batt confronts what it means to be mortal in an astonishing and deeply humane portrait of a father's Parkinson's Disease, and a daughter forged by grief.

'Opening and closing with startling elegies set in the charged moments before and after a death, and compulsively probing the body's animal endurance and appetites, along with the metamorphoses of long illness, The Jaguar is marked by Holland-Batt's distinctive lyric intensity and linguistic mastery, along with a stark new clarity of voice.

'In this collection Holland-Batt is at her most exacting and uncompromising- these ferociously intelligent, insistent poems refuse to look away, and challenge us to view ruthless witness as a form of love. The Jaguar is a devastating and mesmerising collection by a poet at the height of her powers.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2022

winner Quentin Beresford for 'Wounded Country'.

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon Biting The Clouds Biting the Clouds : A Badtjala Perspective on the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act Fiona Foley , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2020 20288202 2020 multi chapter work criticism

Biting The Clouds

A Badtjala perspective on the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897

'In this groundbreaking work of Indigenous scholarship, nationally renowned visual artist Fiona Foley addresses the inherent silences, errors and injustices from the perspective of her people, the Badtjala of K’gari (Fraser Island). She shines a critical light on the little-known colonial-era practice of paying Indigenous workers in opium and the ‘solution’ of then displacing them to K’gari.

Biting the Clouds – a euphemism for being stoned on opium – combines historical, personal and cultural imagery to reclaim the Badtjala story from the colonisation narrative. Full-colour images of Foley’s artwork add further impact to this important examination of Australian history.'

(Source : UQP)

Year: 2020

winner Joe Gorman for 'Heartland: How Rugby League Explains Queensland'.

Works About this Award

Award Goes to Mother, Daughter 2016 single work column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 19 October no. 637 2016; (p. 26)
'Aboriginal mother and daughter writing team Lesley and Tammy Williams have been presented the Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance for their book Not Just Black and White. ...'
Condon’s Powerful Crime Trilogy Gets Nod in Awards 2016 single work column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 14 September 2016; (p. 8)
'It is the final book in an epic trilogy that laid bare the soul of Queensland. All Fall Down by Matthew Condon, an associate editor and writer on Qweekend at The Courier-Mail, has been nominated for the The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award. ...'
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