Helen Garner has followed her win at the Victorian Premier's awards by taking out the prize for fiction ($25,000) for The Spare Room  (Text) at the Queensland Premier's Literary awards, announced last night by Premier Anna Bligh at the State Library of Queensland.

The 14 winners were awarded a total of $225,000, and the Emerging Queensland Author Manuscript Award winner ($20,000) also received a publishing contract with University of Queensland Press. This went to Amy Vought Barker for Omega Park.

David Malouf took out the Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award for poetry with Typewriter Music (UQP); and the Nonfiction Book Award went to Craig Sherborne for Muck (Black Inc.). The Mary Ryan's Award for a children's book went to Li Cunxin and Anne Spudvilas for The Peasant Prince (Viking); and the Young Adult award was given to Matt Ottley for Requiem for a Beast (Lothian).

Other awards included:

Science Writer Award:
Why is Uranus Upside Down? And other questions about the Universe (Fred Watson, A&U)

History Book - Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland Award:
Drawing the Global Colour Line (Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, MUP)

Australian Short Story - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award:
Someone Else John Hughes, Giramondo Publishing)

Unpublished Indigenous Writer - The David Unaipon Award:
Every Secret Thing (Marie Munkara)

Tomorrow, September 18, winners of the 2008 awards will participate in a special event at the State Library of Queensland, as part of the Brisbane Writers' Festival, from 12:15 to 1pm.

For further information on the awards visit www.literaryawards.qld.gov.au.

Source: http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2008/09/09527/

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: craig sherborne, david malouf, fred watson, helen garner, john hughes, li cunxin and anne spudvilas, marilyn lake and henry reynolds, matthew ottley