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The Prize for Indigenous Writing: Shortlist 2006
Judges
Marcia Langton (Convenor), Meme McDonald and Philip Morrissey
Shortlist
| WatershedFabienne Bayet-Charlton
(IAD Press)
Fabienne Bayet-Charlton’s Watershed is an immensely powerful work establishing subtle but effective parallels between the fertility of the main character, a lost child and failing marriage, the dying Murray river system, and a marginalised Aboriginality. An adult book dealing with serious issues this novel is in the tradition of works like Katherine Susannah Pritchard’s Coonardoo. Readers will delight in the intimate and poignant representations of the Murray and its people: Italian, Anglo, and Indigenous Australian, all, in a sense, sharing in the suffering of the Murray. There is a surprising and effective incorporation of the Ouyen Women’s Raindance into the plot and a sad and ironic reference to Stefano di Pieri’s Gondola on the Murray. |
| Sweet GuyJared Thomas
(IAD Press)
Jared Thomas’s debut novel Sweet Guy signals the emergence of an impressive new writer. Thomas’s protagonist Mick, a working-class youth living with his father in a small South Australian town, negotiates the transition of leaving school and home, moving to the city, commencing an arts degree at a sandstone university, and finding his first serious relationship. Along the way Mick has experiences that give him new perspectives on gender relations, friendship, social class and values. The challenges Mick faces give him new respect and sympathy for his father, until then a man he has been critical of. Thomas displays a deft touch as he unravels issues relating to masculinity and the relations between fathers and sons. His mastery of narrative and the language of contemporary Australian youth make this an absorbing story. |
| Little Black BastardNoel Tovey
(Hachette Livre Australia)
Noel Tovey’s autobiography Little Black Bastard is a scarifying portrait of an infancy spent in Carlton when it was a Melbourne slum. Subsequently abandoned by their parents, Tovey and his sister found themselves in the care of a pedophile in rural New South Wales. After repeated abuse this person was eventually charged and convicted and received a light sentence but the experience scarred and separated Tovey and his sister permanently, and for a number of years Tovey lived on the streets. Readers will be shocked at the bleakness of Tovey’s early life but this is a moving story of human resilience. There are reminiscences of Australian theatre and ballet in the 1950s, the early gay/lesbian scene in Melbourne, and Tovey’s theatre career in England. The author returned to Australia in the 1990s and directed groundbreaking works in Aboriginal theatre, and writes candidly of some of the behind-the-scenes problems he encountered. As well as an inspiring story, Tovey’s biography is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of Australian society. |
| Swallow the AirTara June Winch
(University of Queensland Press)
Tara June Winch’s Swallow the Air is an auspicious first novel from a young author. Sophisticated and nuanced, it builds a compelling, but poetic, portrait of a young Aboriginal woman in contemporary Australia. Tough-minded observations on race and the complexities of Aboriginal identity are combined with an interest in language and the relation between language, consciousness and experience. It is this interest in language, and the act of writing, that allows Winch to build up a layered portrait of the novel’s protagonist and develop all the complexities of
her subjectivity. Winch’s novel is noteworthy for the fact that though it deals with issues associated with youth, and has a youthful protagonist, the reader’s pleasure in reading this text is the result of Swallowing the Air’s integrity as a novel, rather than a simple identification with the main character. | |
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