The shortlisted titles for the inaugural Prime Minister's Literary Awards have been announced.

The Australian Government has introduced the Prime Minister's Literary Awards ‘to recognise the major contribution of Australian literature to the nation's cultural and intellectual life.'

The awards offer a tax-free prize of $100,000 for both a fiction and nonfiction work ‘judged to be of the highest literary merit' in each category.

Ninety-one fiction and 103 nonfiction titles were entered into these inaugural Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

The shortlisted titles are:

Fiction

• Burning In (Mireille Juchau, Giramondo)
• El Dorado (Dorothy Porter, Picador)
• Jamaica (Malcolm Knox, A&U)
• Sorry (Gail Jones, Vintage)
• The Complete Stories (David Malouf, Knopf)
• The Widow and Her Hero (Tom Keneally, Vintage)
• The Zookeeper's War (Steven Conte, Fourth Estate)

Nonfiction

• A History of Queensland (Raymond Evans, CUP)
• Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (Clive James, Picador)
• My Life as a Traitor (Zarah Ghahramani with Robert Hillman, Scribe)
• Napoleon: The Path to Power, 1769-1799 (Philip Dwyer, Bloomsbury)
• Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers (Philip Jones, Wakefield)
• Shakespeare's Wife (Germaine Greer, Bloomsbury)
• Vietnam: The Australian War (Paul Ham, HarperCollins)

The exact date for the announcement of the winners is not yet known but will be confirmed shortly and is expected to be ‘within weeks'.
Booksellers should be receiving a promotional pack--including posters, bookmarks and stickers--this week to help promote the shortlist. If you haven't yet received the pack, see website www.arts.gov.au/pmliteraryawards for more information.

http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2008/08/09076/

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

Tags: prime ministers literary awards