Advertisement

Short-list for WA book prize

WA Premier's Award short-lister Amanda Curtin

This year's Miles Franklin winner Evie Wyld is there, as is our Man Booker Prize nominee Richard Flanagan.

Perennial favourite Tim Winton also gets a guernsey on the short list for best fiction in this year's WA Premier's Book Awards.

The other local author short-listed is Amanda Curtin, whose novel, like Winton's, features Fremantle.

WA's annual awards have a $130,000 prize pool for categories including poetry, scripts and digital narratives.

The shining star is the $25,000 Premier's Prize for best overall entry, then $15,000 prizes for best fiction, non-fiction and children's book offerings.

Winton has been short-listed for best fiction for Eyrie, his gritty urban tale of a washed-up former lobbyist.

Britain-based British-Australian Wyld's rural tale All The Birds, Singing features a West Australian farmer.

Flanagan is in the running for The Narrow Road to the Deep North — last week named as the only Commonwealth novel to make the long list for this year's Man Booker Prize. Flanagan's lead character is a prisoner of war doctor on the Burma railway.

Curtin grabbed a short-listing for Elemental, written as advice from a grandmother to grandchild.

New Zealander Tracy Farr is short-listed for The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt. Two-time Miles Franklin winner Alex Miller gets a nod for Coal Creek.

New this year is the $10,000 WA emerging writer's award, for WA residents only.

Nominees are Sally-Ann Jones' book Stella's Sea, set on Cottesloe beach, Dawn Barker's debut Fractured, Sarah Drummond's Salt Story of sea-dogs and fisherwomen and Yvette Walker's Letters to the End of Love.

State Library of WA chief executive and State Librarian Margaret Allen said the awards showed the abundance of talent in Australia.

To read reviews of select titles from the WA Premier's Book Awards, read The West Australian's books pages at thewest. com.au/books and place your vote for The West Australian People's Choice Award at thewest.com.au/bookawards.