The work examines the Indigenous people of the Dyarubbin (Hawkesbury River) and the collision of cultures that takes place when white colonisation begins – a subject similar to Kate Grenville’s acclaimed 2005 novel The Secret River. Grace Karskens, emeritus professor of history at the University of New South Wales, won the Australian history prize for People of the River: Lost Worlds of Early Australia. The poetry prize was awarded to Stephen Edgar for his collection of poems The Strangest Place. The Prime Minister’s Literary award for nonfiction was won by Quentin Sprague for The Stranger Artist: Life at the Edge of Kimberley Painting, which traces the decade artist and ex-gallerist Tony Oliver travelled to the East Kimberley and worked with senior Gija artists, including Paddy Bedford and Freddie Timms, and established the Aboriginal painting collective Jirrawun Arts. The endowed chair position was discontinued by the university in 2019 when it lost its funding. I look forward to the day when the university re-establishes an institution that any self-respecting nation should be proud to showcase.” “So it was a great shock when our oldest university – Sydney – recently abolished its chair of Australian literature. “Australian literature has never been richer or more diverse,” Lohrey wrote. Her literary agent Lyn Tranter accepted the award on the writer’s behalf and delivered a brief prepared acceptance speech that targeted the University of Sydney.
“ has an instinctive, if understated, sense of form and an inimitable novelist’s voice,” the judges’ statement said. Judges described the 74-year-old Tasmanian author and academic as “a writer of uncompromising artistic purpose who is never content for the novel to be mere entertainment”.
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