New South Wales State Literary Awards
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
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History

Now known as the NSW Premier's Literary Awards

Presented by the New South Wales Minister for Arts the categories were:

  • Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
  • Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction
  • Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
  • Children's Books
  • Book of the Year (1992)
  • Play Award (1992)
  • Ethnic Affairs Award (1993)
  • Talking Book of the Year (1993)
  • International Year of the Family Award (1994)

 

Notes

  • The New South Wales Premier's Literary awards were known by this name between 1987 and 1994

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 1994

winner (International Year of the Family Award) y separately published work icon The Wild Sweet Flowers : Alvie Skerritt Stories Marian Favel Clair Eldridge , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1994 Z297750 1994 selected work short story

'Alvie Skerritt - irrepressible, down-to-earth, sometimes fierce - is the centre of this boldly original collection of linked narratives. These stories present a modern family portrait full of compassion and humour.' (Publication summary)

winner (Ethnic Affairs Commission Award) y separately published work icon Aphrodite and the Others Gillian Bouras , Ringwood : McPhee Gribble , 1994 Z391751 1994 single work biography
winner (Play Award) y separately published work icon Sex Diary of an Infidel Michael Gurr , Sydney Melbourne : Currency Press Playbox Theatre Centre, Monash University , 1992 Z88977 1992 single work drama

'A cunning web of truth, lies, self-delusion and depravity, set against the backgrounds of Manila and Melbourne. Jean, an award-winning journalist, travels to the Philippines to write an exposé of Australian sex tours. Blackmail and revolution were not in the original brief, but as the lives of the six infidels mesh together, there are no rules and many surprises.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

winner (Children's Book Award) y separately published work icon The White Guinea-Pig Ursula Dubosarsky , Ringwood : Viking , 1994 Z275975 1994 single work novel young adult 'At once funny and sad, quirky and moving, here is a powerful novel about change and growth, about fear, about the things in life we can control - and those we can't.' (Publisher's blurb)
winner (Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry) y separately published work icon Ghosting William Buckley Barry Hill , Port Melbourne : Heinemann , 1993 Z322991 1993 single work poetry
winner (Christina Stead Prize for Fiction) y separately published work icon Seasonal Adjustments Adib Khan , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1994 Z184818 1994 single work novel

' Iqbal Chaudhary is fortyish, but the mid-life crisis he faces is more complex than many. His Australian marriage has collapsed, his past surfaces to bother his conscience and he feels a compulsive need to go back to the country he left immediately after the war with Pakistan, eighteen years earlier. But his reception from family and friends is deeply mixed. Iqbal is forced to confront why he left Bangladesh and how he feels about his family as well as his native country whose poverty, squalor and overcrowding make him react involuntarily with the squeamishness of a Westerner.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

winner (Book of the Year) y separately published work icon Seasonal Adjustments Adib Khan , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1994 Z184818 1994 single work novel

' Iqbal Chaudhary is fortyish, but the mid-life crisis he faces is more complex than many. His Australian marriage has collapsed, his past surfaces to bother his conscience and he feels a compulsive need to go back to the country he left immediately after the war with Pakistan, eighteen years earlier. But his reception from family and friends is deeply mixed. Iqbal is forced to confront why he left Bangladesh and how he feels about his family as well as his native country whose poverty, squalor and overcrowding make him react involuntarily with the squeamishness of a Westerner.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 1993

winner (Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry) y separately published work icon Translations from the Natural World Les Murray , Paddington : Isabella Press , 1992 Z208589 1992 selected work poetry Translations from the Natural World, Les Murray's new collection of poems, is, like all his work, rich in inventiveness, perception, and a rare delight in the mimetic powers of language. Its centerpiece is 'Presence', a sequence of forty 'translations from the natural world' about a variety of natural settings and their amazing denizens. Lyre birds, honeycombs, sea lions, cuttlefish, and possums all act as spurs to Murray's protean talents for description and imitation. As Lachlan MacKinnon wrote in The Times Literary Supplement, 'These poems, a grand tour of the given, are a great hymn to the particularities in which God's creative generosity is expressed, and they will be widely enjoyed and admired. Their technical and linguistic largesse confirms . . . that Les Murray is one of the very finest poets in whom the English language is now at work.' (Libraries Australia)
winner (Christina Stead Prize for Fiction) y separately published work icon Remembering Babylon David Malouf , London Milsons Point : Chatto and Windus Random House , 1993 Z452447 1993 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 48 units)

'In the mid-1840s, a thirteen-year-old boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by Aborigines. Sixteen years later, when settlers reach the area, he moves back into the world of Europeans, men and women who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place, hopeful and yet terrified of what it might do to them.

Given shelter by the McIvors, the family of the children who originally made contact with him, Gemmy seems at first to be guaranteed a secure role in the settlement, but there are currents of fear and mistrust in the air. To everyone he meets - from George Abbot, the romantically aspiring young teacher, to Mr Frazer, the minister, whose days are spent with Gemmy recording the local flora; from Janet McIvor, just coming to adulthood and discovering new versions of the world, to the eccentric Governor of Queensland himself - Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge, as a force which both fascinates and repels. And Gemmy himself finds his own whiteness as unsettling in this new world as the knowledge he brings with him of the savage, the Aboriginal.' - Publisher's blurb (Chatto & Windus, 1993).

winner (Ethnic Affairs Commission Award) y separately published work icon The Crocodile Fury Beth Yahp , Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1992 Z89263 1992 single work novel fantasy 'Set in a convent school on a jungle-covered hill on the outskirts of a Southeast Asian city, The Crocodile Fury follows the fortunes of three generations: the grandmother who was a bonded servant when the convent was a rich man's mansion; the mother who works each day in the convent laundry; and the girl who tells the story.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

winner (Children's Book Award) y separately published work icon Roughtail : The Dreaming of the Roughtail Lizard and Other Stories Told by the Kukatja Tjarany : Tjaranykura Tjukurrpa Ngaanpa Kalkinpa Wangka Tjukurrtjanu; Tjarany : Roughtail Gracie Greene , Joe Tramacchi , Lucille Gill , Lucille Gill (illustrator), Broome : Magabala Books , 1990 Z843149 1990 selected work children's fiction children's Indigenous story

'Tjarany Roughtail contains eight dreamtime stories from the Kukatja people of Western Australia’s remote Kimberley Region. Each story is complemented by beautiful artworks painted by Aboriginal artist Lucille Gill that visually explain each story using traditional dot paintings. Told in English and Kukatja, the book includes magnificent paintings, maps, kinship diagrams, exercises and language notes. Winner of Children's Book Council of Australia Award.'

winner (Book of the Year) y separately published work icon Roughtail : The Dreaming of the Roughtail Lizard and Other Stories Told by the Kukatja Tjarany : Tjaranykura Tjukurrpa Ngaanpa Kalkinpa Wangka Tjukurrtjanu; Tjarany : Roughtail Gracie Greene , Joe Tramacchi , Lucille Gill , Lucille Gill (illustrator), Broome : Magabala Books , 1990 Z843149 1990 selected work children's fiction children's Indigenous story

'Tjarany Roughtail contains eight dreamtime stories from the Kukatja people of Western Australia’s remote Kimberley Region. Each story is complemented by beautiful artworks painted by Aboriginal artist Lucille Gill that visually explain each story using traditional dot paintings. Told in English and Kukatja, the book includes magnificent paintings, maps, kinship diagrams, exercises and language notes. Winner of Children's Book Council of Australia Award.'

winner (Play Award) y separately published work icon Dead Heart Nicholas Parsons , Sydney Perth : Currency Press Belvoir Street Theatre Black Swan Theatre Company , 1994 Z181328 1994 single work drama
winner (Special Award) Mudrooroo

Year: 1992

winner (Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry) y separately published work icon Selected Poems Elizabeth Riddell , Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1992 Z321972 1992 selected work poetry satire
winner (Book of the Year) y separately published work icon Selected Poems Elizabeth Riddell , Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1992 Z321972 1992 selected work poetry satire
winner (Christina Stead Prize for Fiction) y separately published work icon La Mort de Napoléon Simon Leys , Paris : Hermann , 1986 Z1431267 1986 single work novel (taught in 1 units)

'A hypothetical account of what could have happened if Napolean had not died depicts the Emperor traveling incognito through Europe experiencing a series of bizarre adventures that bring him face to face with reality.' (Publication summary)

winner (Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction) y separately published work icon Patrick White : A Life David Marr , London : Jonathan Cape , 1991 Z307107 1991 single work biography 'Patrick White, winner of the Nobel Prize and author of more than a dozen novels and plays - including Voss, The Vivisector and The Twyborn Affair - lived an extraordinary life. David Marr's brilliant biography draws not only on a wide range of original research but also on the single most difficult and important source of all: the man himself. Gracefully written and exhaustively researched, Patrick White is a biography of classic excellence - sympathetic, objective, penetrating and as blunt, when necessary, as White himself.' (Source: LibrariesAustralia)
winner (Children's Book Award) y separately published work icon All in the Blue Unclouded Weather Robin Klein , Ringwood : Viking , 1991 Z194332 1991 single work novel young adult Set in a summer of the post war years of the 1940s, this is the story of three dynamic sisters growing up in poverty.
winner (Play Award) y separately published work icon Cosi Louis Nowra , Sydney : Currency Press Belvoir Street Theatre , 1992 Z459111 1992 single work musical theatre (taught in 8 units)
— Appears in: コシ. ゴールデン・エイジ 2006;

Play with music.

Loosely based on Nowra's own experience at producing a play (Trial by Jury) at Melbourne's Plenty Mental Home, Cosi has become a favourite with theatre companies and audiences alike since it premiered in 1992. Full of theatrical jokes and roles rich with Jonsonian humour, the play's use of a play rehearsal device also provokes images of the not-too dissimilar 'families' that come together in the professional theatre. Indeed, Nowra notes in the premiere season's programme notes that 'like the actual events of those days [the play] is, I hope, full of comedy and affection. Real madness and angst only occurred when I worked with professional actors'.

Set in 1971, Cosi takes an affectionate look at madness and mayhem in a world where institutions can be less limiting than ideology. The narrative is played out two locations, a mental institution and a suburban backyard. , Fresh from university, Lewis (a play on Louis) arrives to direct a play with the inmates, but is persuaded by Roy to stage his favourite opera, Cosi Fan Tutte. Lewis' problems don't end, however, with the fact that the other inmates are neither opera singers nor Italian-speakers. There is Ruth, troubled by the concept of a real illusion ; Zac, who insists on playing Wagner ; Doug, who is committed to the closed ward ; not to mention the sexual advances by Cherry and Julie. Lewis's world is no less complicated at home, where he has to contend with escaping pigs, exploding beer bottles and the pretensions of his politically correct friends.

The music incorporated into the narrative includes: 'Wild Thing' (by The Troggs), various songs from Cosi Fan Tutte, 'Purple Haze' (Jimmy Hendrix) 'Candy Says' (a Velvet Underground song, pre-recorded), and Wagner's 'The Ride Of The Valkyries'.

winner (Ethnic Affairs Commission Award) y separately published work icon Inside Outside : Life Between Two Worlds A. P. Riemer , North Ryde : Angus and Robertson , 1992 Z248856 1992 single work autobiography
winner (Script Writing Award) form y separately published work icon Dingo Marc Rosenberg , ( dir. Rolf De Heer ) 1991 Australia Paris : Gevest Productions AO Productions , 1991 Z171883 1991 single work film/TV John 'Dingo' Anderson is a 'dogger' (dingo trapper) by day and trumpet player in a local band by night. His fascination with the instrument comes from a chance encounter as a child with Billy Cross, a legendary American jazz trumpeter: Cross played an impromptu concert on the tarmac of Poona Flat airport after his plane was forced to make an unscheduled stop. The young Anderson decides on the spot to become a trumpet player. Twenty years later, he has developed a unique style based on the sounds of the Australian bush, particularly the dingo, but he's still in Poona Flat. He dreams, however, of going to Paris to play with Cross. He has kept in touch with his idol, sending letters and tapes of his music. As he approaches his 30th birthday, John flies to Paris without telling his wife Jane. He wants to know if he's good enough. Billy Cross is now an ailing recluse, but he and his French wife take John in. John makes his solo debut at a famous club, and Billy comes out of retirement to join him on stage. John then returns to Poona Flat, in time for his 'surprise' birthday party.

[Source: Australian Screen]

Year: 1991

winner (Ethnic Affairs Commission Award) y separately published work icon Jewels and Ashes Arnold Zable , Newham : Scribe , 1991 Z195663 1991 biography First his parents made a journey to the New World. It was the 1930s, and Europe was seething. As he grew up, Arnold Zable heard tales, songs, fragments of the world they had left behind. He had inherited a fractured, vibrant past which both fascinated and disturbed him. Finally, he had to confront the mystery: he had to travel back to the Old World, to his parents' home, to his grandparents' birthplace, and to a land pervaded by ancestral ghosts. (Publisher's blurb)
winner (Play Award) y separately published work icon Hotel Sorrento Hannie Rayson , Sydney Melbourne : Currency Press Playbox Theatre , 1990 Z481931 1990 single work drama (taught in 3 units)

Hotel Sorrento is a vivid, moving and funny play which explores the concept of loyalty both to family and to country. Three sisters come together after ten years: Hilary who lives in Sorrento with her father and her sixteen-year-old son; Pippa visiting from New York where she works in advertising; and Meg, who returns home from England with her English husband after her new novel Melancholy is shortlisted for the Booker prize. Unspoken aspects of their shared past, jolted by the autobiographical flavour of Meg's book, haunt their reunion.

Coincidentally, Marge, a teacher, with a holiday house in Sorrento, reads the novel and finds it captures an Australia she knows. Her friend, Dick, however, is worried by Meg's expatriate status. This interest draws them into the family where the issues of culture, patriotism, and using the past are battled out.

Source: Publisher's blurb (back cover).

winner (Children's Book Award) y separately published work icon Strange Objects Gary Crew , Port Melbourne : Heinemann , 1990 Z349485 1990 single work novel young adult mystery (taught in 3 units)

A sixteen-year-old Western Australian boy mysteriously disappears after he discovers valuable relics in the remains of a seventeen-century shipwreck.

winner (Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry) y separately published work icon The Winter Baby Jennifer Maiden , Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1990 Z343099 1990 selected work poetry

The book's sections, with their subtly seasonal patterning, are designed to complement each other and to enrich the reader's imagination through the exacting precision of a style distinguished by its dextrous control. (Source: back cover)

winner (Christina Stead Prize for Fiction) y separately published work icon JF Was Here Nigel Krauth , Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1990 Z57290 1990 single work novel
joint winner (Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction) y separately published work icon Poppy Drusilla Modjeska , Ringwood : McPhee Gribble , 1990 Z791794 1990 single work novel (taught in 2 units) Drusilla Modjeska sets out to collect the evidence of her mother's life. When the facts refuse to give up their secrets, she follows the threads of history and memory into imagination. There she teases out the story of Poppy, who married at twenty and had an apparently happy life until, suddenly one day in 1959, she was taken away to a sanatorium. (Source: Libraries Australia)
winner (Special Award) Judith Wright

Year: 1990

winner (Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry) y separately published work icon The Clean Dark Robert Adamson , Sydney : Paper Bark Press , 1989 Z367130 1989 selected work poetry
joint winner (Script Writing Award) form y separately published work icon Sweetie Gerard Lee , Jane Campion , ( dir. Jane Campion ) Australia : Arena Films , 1989 Z180189 1989 single work film/TV (taught in 1 units)

At the centre of this story of family life is the contrast between the deadpan, phobic Kay and the manic, excessive Dawn (Sweetie). The film explores aspects of Australian life and the Australian psyche, and probes into the viewer's consciousness by showing the narrow boundary between eccentricity, madness, and normality.

Joint winner with Laura Jones, An Angel at my Table.
winner (Children's Book Award) y separately published work icon The Blue Chameleon Katherine Scholes , Melbourne : Hill of Content , 1989 Z419216 1989 single work novel young adult

"Story of famine in the deep Sahara, the ozone hole over Antarctica, the dangerous legacy of a dead biologist - and Beui Ish-Mahel, the survivor of an ancient desert clan. The B̀lue chameleon' is currently being adapted as a screenplay." (Source: Trove)

winner (Christina Stead Prize for Fiction) y separately published work icon Reaching Tin River Thea Astley , Port Melbourne : Heinemann , 1990 Z557401 1990 single work novel

'Belle's mother was a drummer in an all-women's group before she turned vegetarian and went to live in a shack in the hills. Her father was a trumpeter Belle met for the first time in a Manhattan jazz bar. She had a husband, too, briefly - an upwardly mobile deputy librarian searching for the perfect sauce.Belle even had a best friend once, whose ebullience was finally subdued in vermouth and leather sofas.Their selves were their centres, and Belle realized she'd have to research much further to find her own ...' (Publication summary)

Works About this Award

Reflections on Current Literature for Children Lilith Norman , 1995 single work column
— Appears in: Magpies : Talking About Books for Children , July vol. 10 no. 3 1995; (p. 15-16)
Reflections on Awards and Reviews Patrick Buckridge , 1995 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: Imago : New Writing , March vol. 7 no. 1 1995; (p. 67-69)
Unknown Local Author Adjusts to Literary Fame Susan Perry , 1994 single work biography
— Appears in: The Age , 1 October 1994; (p. 3)
Adib Cooks Himself a Winner Susan Perry , 1994 single work biography
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 1 October 1994; (p. 13)
Literary Awards Shortlists 1994 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 9 September 1994; (p. 20)
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