Tasmania Book Prizes

Tasmania’s thriving literary community bursts to the forefront of the Ten Days on the Island calendar from 1–4 April, offering up a rich banquet of events for all lovers of literature. Engage with an inspiring programme of literary panel sessions, conversations and readings in the lead-up to the announcement of the highly sought-after Tasmania Book Prizes.

Hosted in the Commissariat Store, Ten Days’ impressive new literary venue in Tasmania’s oldest public building, the Tasmania Book Prizes are testament to the vitality and quality of Tasmania’s literary industry. A biennial suite of prizes delivered by Arts Tasmania and the University of Tasmania, they recognise, promote and encourage the increasingly active and popular Tasmanian publishing industry.

Judges for the Tasmania Book Prizes have selected the books for the shortlist from 80 entries. They described the quality of entries as ‘exceptionally high’, making the judging process difficult. The shortlisted books are in three categories.

The Tasmania Book Prize — best book with Tasmanian content in any genre, $25,000:

Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography, by Roslynn D. Haynes (Polymath Press, 2006)

Closing Hell’s Gates: the Death of a Convict Station, by Hamish Maxwell-Stewart (Allen & Unwin, 2008)

Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography, by Roslynn D. Haynes (Polymath Press, 2006)

Jack Thwaites: Pioneer Tasmanian Bushwalker & Conservationist, by Simon Kleinig (Forty Degrees South, 2008)

Closing Hell’s Gates: the Death of a Convict Station, by Hamish Maxwell-Stewart (Allen & Unwin, 2008)

The University of Tasmania Prize — best book by a Tasmanian publisher, $5,000:

For the Record: James Bennell’s Buildings in Early Launceston, by Helen Davies (Terrace Press, 2006)

Collection Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, multiple contributors (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2007)

As a special event for Ten Days, the Tasmanian Writers’ Centre presents prominent Tasmanian writer, Karen Knight, who will present Tasmanian Hebridean Dreaming: writing foreign lands. Karen spent time as writer-in-residence in Scotland during 2007, including four days in the Hebridean Islands where she formed a creative partnership with Scottish poet and lecturer Dillys Rose. Karen and Dillys have corresponded ever since, with each writing a poem each month for the past year on the same topic from their respective places. The work will be published in England in October 2009.

Panel sessions will be held daily at noon from 1–3 April in the Commissariat Store, 40 Macquarie Street, Hobart, to discuss the three shortlists. The winners will be announced in the same venue at 4pm on 4 April.

[RETURN TO TOP]

HOME > BOOKS > ARCHIVES 2009 >