Don Watson’s The Bush, a meditation on the heartland of Australia, won the 2015 book of the year and non-fiction prizes at the New South Wales premier’s literary awards.
Watson was awarded $50,000 total prize money at the ceremony at the State Library of NSW on Monday night. In his award speech, he spoke of the gloominess of rural Australia and the challenges of writing. He said, “You need encouragement when you’re young but also when you’re old.”
He dedicated his prize to the “cause of the bush” and added that if there was a subliminal message in his book it’s that “we have buggered it up”.
The judges said Watson’s work “illuminates a kaleidoscopic subject central to our idea of ourselves”. Commenting on the range and themes of the work, they said: “Watson moves fluently between genres – social history, travelogue, nature writing, memoir – and produces memorable observations on every page … His vision finds room for mountain ash, weeds and the roses grown by farmers’ wives.”
In his review of The Bush, Guardian Australia writer Paul Daley also praised Watson, a former speechwriter for Paul Keating, for his soothing narrative through time and country, “worth its price for his contemplation of horses and sheep in the rural landscape alone”.
The premier’s special award, to recognise a writer’s unique achievements, went to David Williamson, described by the judges as Australia’s “greatest living playwright”.
Williamson, who has written more than 40 plays and film scripts, including the Golden Globe-nominated Gallipoli and his most recent stage play, Rupert, about the life and influence of Murdoch, donated all his prize money to Sydney’s Ensemble theatre to support new playwriting.
David Williamson will donate his $10,000 prize to @ensemblesydney to ensure the production of new Australian work. #PremiersLitAwards
— State Library of NSW (@statelibrarynsw) May 18, 2015
The $40,000 Christina Stead prize for fiction went to Mark Henshaw’s thriller The Snow Kimono, the story of a retired French police inspector and Japanese law professor that shifts between France, Japan and Algeria. The judges called the novel “a meditation on memory, love and betrayal and a puzzling, meta-fictive game about representation and illusion”.
In other categories, Jennifer Kent picked up the Betty Roland prize for scriptwriting for her internationally acclaimed horror film The Babadook, David Malouf’s Earth Hour received the poetry prize, and Black Diggers, by Tom Wright, a play about the experiences of forgotten Indigenous soldiers, won the top award for playwriting.
The shortlisted works were selected from more than 500 entries across 13 prizes and were chosen to represent the best in Australian writing. In 2014, the book of the year award was given to Michelle de Kretser for Questions of Travel.
Don Watson, Mark Henshaw and Jennifer Kent will speak at Sydney Writers’ festival on 21 May at 1.30pm.
The full list of winners
Book of the year
The Bush by Don Watson
Special award
David Williamson AO
Christina Stead prize for fiction
The Snow Kimono by Mark Henshaw
UTS Glenda Adams award for new writing
An Elegant Young Man by Luke Carman
Douglas Stewart prize for non-fiction
The Bush by Don Watson
Kenneth Slessor prize for poetry
Earth Hour by David Malouf
Patricia Wrightson prize for children’s literature (joint winners)
Crossing, Catherine Norton (Omnibus/Scholastic Australia)
Figgy in the World, Tamsin Janu (Omnibus/Scholastic Australia)
Ethel Turner prize for young people’s literature
The Cracks in the Kingdom, Jaclyn Moriarty
Betty Roland prize for scriptwriting
The Babadook, Jennifer Kent
Nick Enright prize for playwriting
Black Diggers, Tom Wright
2015 Multicultural NSW award
Black and Proud: the story of an AFL photo, Matthew Klugman and Gary Osmond
The NSW Premier’s prize for translation
Brian Nelson
Multicultural NSW early career translator prize
Lilit Zekulin Thwaites
