The shortlist for this year's Age Book of the Year awards has been announced.

The awards, now in their 35th year, offer three $10,000 prizes, one each for a work of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The Book of the Year award, worth an additional $10,000, goes to one of the three category winners.

The shortlist is:

Novel:

• Burning In (Mireille Juchau, Giramondo Press)
• The Orphan Gunner (Sara Knox, Giramondo Press)
• Diary of a Bad Year (J M Coetzee, Text)
• Breath (Tim Winton, Hamish Hamilton)
• The Good Parents (Joan London, Vintage)

Nonfiction:

• I am Melba (Ann Blainey, Black Inc.)
• Van Diemen's Land (James Boyce, Black Inc.)
• An Exacting Heart (Jacqueline Kent, Viking)
• A Family History of Smoking (Andrew Riemer, MUP)
• American Journeys (Don Watson, Knopf)

Poetry:

• Not Finding Wittgenstein (J S Harry, Giramondo Press)
• Shades of the Sublime and the Beautiful (John Kinsella, Fremantle Press)
• Scar Revision (Tracy Ryan, Fremantle Press)
• Bark (Anthony Lawrence, UQP)
• Typewriter Music (David Malouf, UQP)

The awards will be presented at Melbourne Writers' Festival's opening night on August 22, and on August 23 a session will allow winning writers to read from and discuss their work. See www.mwf.com.au for more information.

http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2008/08/09074/

This article from Thorpe Bowker's Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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