Here’s Cheers for Small Publishers
JA
February 03
Small publisher Giramondo has had a knockout year on the 2009 literary awards circuit during – out of their list, a total of 6 have won various prestigious literary prizes, as well as being shortlisted for another 13. Among them was Tom Cho’s brilliant collection of short stories, Look Who’s Morphing, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Age Book of the Year and the 2009 Melbourne Prize New Writing Award, Evelyn Juers' House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann, which was the joint winner of the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-Fiction and Lisa Gorton's poetry collection Press Release, which won the 2008 Victorian Premier's CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry. Gerald Murnane (Barley Patch, Tamarisk Row) also took out the Melbourne Prize for Literature, with a very memorable ode to the streets he’d lived by way of an acceptance speech, and Beverley Farmer (The Bone House) won the 2009 Patrick White Literary Award for an under-recognised writer who has made a major contribution to Australian literature.
This is no small feat for a small publisher, and it’s great to see Giramondo make such a stamp on the local literary landscape. The same goes for Sleepers Publishing, who have had an incredible debut into fiction with Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming, which was named the 2009 Age Book of the Year and has been picked up by Pantheon in the US and Harvill Secker in the UK (keep a look out for an interview with Steven in the upcoming March edition of Meanjin), as well as huge success with Kalinda Ashton’s The Danger Game.
Spike is looking forward to some exciting new titles by these small houses, and others this year.
Our Friends
- Overland
- Alien Onion
- Ampersand Duck
- Andrew McDonald
- A Pair of Ragged Claws
- Arts Victoria
- Australia Council for the Arts
- Ben Eltham
- Bookshow blog
- CAL
- City of Tongues
- Crikey
- darkly wise, rudely great
- David Astle
- Elmo Keep Does Stuff
- The Ember
- Fly the Falcon blog
- Going Down Swinging
- Griffith Review
- Hackpacker
- Harvest
- HEAT
- Island
- Killings blog
- Literary Minded
- Lorraine Crescent
- Lynden Barber
- Mandy Ord
- Marcus Westbury
- Matilda
- Meanland
- Melbourne University Publishing
- Mel Campbell
- The Monthly
- Musings of an Inappropriate Woman
- Oslo Davis
- Paul Callaghan
- Read, Think, Write
- Sleepers Publishing
- Sorrow at Sills Bend
- SPLOG
- Tom Cho
- Virgule
- Wet Ink
- Wheeler Centre
Comments
03 Feb 10 at 15:58
Wow, that is certainly an impressive list! Great to see small publishers making their mark.
...04 Feb 10 at 18:09
Yes, dazzling results for Giramondo - we can also add Robert Gray's autobiography, The Land I Walked Through Last, which took out the Waverley NIB prize. Still have two of the Sleepers' titles to go - glad to have that to look forward to! and I'm waiting for what Giramondo have out this year with anticipation.
...05 Dec 11 at 4:46
What a frankly incredible post!
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