Winning history: 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards

On the 23 October 2019 the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Arts, Paul Fletcher announced the winners of the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

Australian history award

The winner of the Australian history award was The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History Meredith Lake, NewSouth Publishing. The judges commented:

This is a vast and sweeping book that covers ground from the religiosity of new immigrants to the impact of the Bible, via missions and missionaries, on the world's oldest living culture. This is a highly original look at our past; a highly readable narrative that reminds contemporary Australians of the forces that shaped our culture. Lake is comprehensive in her analysis of the impact of the Bible on Indigenous culture, its role in frontier conflict, and its cultural impact on 'free' settlers, and reform movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Australia's shift towards secularism since the First World War and how the Bible has lost influence and favour is documented in meticulous detail.

Other winners

Winners in the other literary categories were:

Fiction: The Death of Noah Glass, Gail Jones, Text Publishing

Non-fiction: Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955–1964, Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell, Monash University Press

Poetry: Sun Music: New and Selected Poems, Judith Beveridge, Giramondo Press

Children’s literature: His Name Was Walter, Emily Rodda, Angus & Robertson

Young adult literature: The Things That Will Not Stand, Michael Gerard Bauer, Omnibus Books

Acknowledgement: The image above is inspired by Meredith Lake’s award winning book The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History. It is This Bible Saved a Life. Make That Life worth Living. Buy Peace Bonds [picture]. (1919) and comes from the State Library of Victoria. Note this image is not in copyright. See acknowledgement page for full details.

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