MEDIA RELEASE: 2024 Roderick Literary Award Longlist Announced
2024 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award Longlist Announced
Monday 8th July 2024
Fourteen books, including fiction, poetry and non-fiction, have been longlisted for the $50,000 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award in 2024.
The Award is given to the best Australian book of the year that deals with any aspect of Australian life, and is open to books of any genre.
In the wake of a $20,000 increase in prize money, the competition attracted one of the largest ever fields, with 235 books entered for the handsome cheque and the accompanying H.T. Priestley Memorial Medal.
The Award is funded by the largest ever bequest given to a regional university in Australia, by Margaret and Colin Roderick, to north Queensland’s James Cook University. Professor Roderick was the founding professor of English at JCU. His wife Margaret collaborated in his literary scholarship and oversaw the massive gift that has more than doubled the Award’s prize money since 2022.
Asked to comment on writing trends this year, chair of the judging panel Dr Leigh Dale said it was an exceptional year for books by Indigenous authors. Books by renowned novelists Melissa Lucashenko and Alexis Wright have been longlisted, along with Ellen van Neerven’s Personal Score, a book about sport that weaves together history, memoir and social critique.
Writers of memoir and fiction seem to have turned to the lives of foremothers. Kate Grenville’s Restless Dolly Maunder is based on the life of her grandmother, while Rachelle Unreich’s A Brilliant Life is a biography of her mother. The novels Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth, Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton and The Conversion by Amanda Lohrey all focus on the lives of women.
There was some mention of Covid, the standout contribution being Life As We Knew it: The Extraordinary Story of Australia’s Pandemic by Melbourne Age journalists Aisha Dow and Melissa Cunningham. The other non-fiction work to make it to the long list is Sally Young’s Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires. Young took out the award in 2020 with Paper Emperors, the first in her monumental trilogy of histories of print media.
The dominant theme this year, though, was climate change, said Dr Dale. ‘It’s a subtle but powerful undercurrent in The Conversion, Lola in the Mirror and Edenglassie, and is central to Personal Score and Praiseworthy.’ Many of the poems in the anthology A Line in the Sand, and Bradley Christmas’s novel for young teens, Saltwater Boy, also foreground the importance of connecting with the physical environment.
Saltwater Boy is one of three novels for young adults and teenagers that has made the long list, along with Rebecca Lim’s Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky and Alison A. Tait’s The First Summer of Callie McGee.
‘Together, these fourteen books showcase the very best of current Australian writing and publishing’, said Dr Dale, who recommended that ‘everyone should have a look at these books. The short list usually represents a consensus, so there can be books on the long list that might really appeal to a specific kind of reader.’
She paid tribute to her fellow judges, renowned Townsville journalist Mary Vernon, and Professor Emerita Susan K. Martin of La Trobe University, for a decision-making process that has so far been unusual for the degree of agreement among judges.
The shortlist will be announced in mid-August, with the winner’s name revealed at the annual award presentation by the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies in October.
The longlist books and judges’ comments
Bradley Christmas, Saltwater Boy, Walker Books. A coming-of-age story for young adults, this book focuses on Matthew, his parents, his friends and his search for meaning. When he and his mother move to a small fishing town, he discovers a whole new life that his father’s return makes even more complicated. Moving and heartfelt.
Trent Dalton, Lola in the Mirror, Fourth Estate/HarperCollins. A story of homelessness, violence and dysfunction seen through the eyes of a 17-year-old girl who has never lived any other way, although she firmly believes she will be a world-famous artist one day. Yes, it’s violent, it’s sentimental, and wallows in it – but go with the flow, you won’t regret it.
Aisha Dow and Melissa Cunningham, Life As We Knew It: The Extraordinary Story of Australia’s Pandemic, Scribe Publications. Why would anyone want to revisit the beginnings of the pandemic? Because this gripping, detailed, thoroughly-researched book illuminates the events, the decisions and the emotions of those days in Australia.
Kate Grenville, Restless Dolly Maunder, Text Publishing. It’s hard to believe that in just two generations so much could have changed for Australian women but Grenville, in this fictionalised version of her grandmother’s life, makes it very clear. She transforms history into a gripping and emotional journey.
Sally Hepworth, Darling Girls, Pan Macmillan Australia. A rollercoaster ride of twists, turns and horrific surprises in this thriller. It’s the story of three foster children, that unravels their experiences as children and then as adults. It’s not for the faint-hearted, and nobody will expect the ending.
Rebbeca Lim, Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky, Allen & Unwin. This delicately written and compelling young adult story traces the suffering of a village family during China’s Great Leap Forward. As they struggle to survive, their father attempts to make a place for them as immigrants during the time of the White Australia policy.
Amanda Lohrey, The Conversion, Text Publishing. The title of this sparely-written, elegant novel ostensibly refers to trying to convert a church into a home after tragedy, but the story is as much about spiritual and life conversions as it is about a building. The novel follows the progress of Zoe’s life toward some sort of rebuilding after the betrayal and death of her husband.
Melissa Lucashenko, Edenglassie, University of Queensland Press. The title is an early colonial name for Brisbane. There are two storylines: of Mulanyin and Nita, who watch as their lands are filled by white people, and Winona and Johnny, as they try to wrangle the feisty Mrs Eddie Blanket. In characteristically vivid prose, Lucashenko shows the ways that intimate relationships were, and continue to be, shaped by the violence of colonisation.
Red Room Poetry, A Line in the Sand: 20 Years of Red Room Poetry, Pantera Press. A strong collection with a wide variety of styles and concerns, with a consistent focus on social issues. If you want to sample the best of current Australian poetry, this book is for you.
Alison A. Tait, The First Summer of Callie McGee, Scholastic. This novel for younger readers explores the idea that we understand our lives in part by using stories from books, particularly in times of crisis and change. It shows that social convention can be not just constraining but fatal, even for adults.
Ellen van Neerven, Personal Score, University of Queensland Press. This is a beautifully written contemplation: memoir, history, and analysis of the country’s relation to sport, including Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous understandings of competition, play and belonging in life. Wide-ranging but always with controlled purpose, the book holds readers through a sometimes excruciating journey of shyness, experiences of racism and homophobia, committed othering, and losing and finding place.
Rachelle Unreich, A Brilliant Life, Hachette. In these difficult days with anti-Semitism sweeping the Western world, this tale of survival of the Nazi Holocaust is timely. But it’s a story not just survival, but of retaining humanity, optimism and love in the face of the most inhumane and vicious acts.
Alexis Wright, Praiseworthy, Giramondo. An ebullient writing style hurtles the reader across more than 800 pages. Ostensibly an epic story of the eponymous town, Praiseworthy tackles climate change and the Northern Territory intervention in prose that is rambunctious, erudite, and simmering with rage.
Sally Young, Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires, University of New South Wales Press. Sally Young’s stunning research and lively story-telling reveal intriguing details of the workings and influence of the print media. Essential reading for anyone interested in politics and history.
For further information contact:
Marg Naylor
0428585877