The premier of Queensland, Australia, has announced she will bring back public funding for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards which had been cancelled by her predecessor and former premier Campbell Newman in in 2012. Annastacia Palasczcuk committed $125,000 to match public funding for the awards and created a new category for a work of state significance.
“Funding the literary awards is the next step in taking the arts back to its rightful place, where Queensland is an arts leader,” Ms Palaszczuk said. “I applaud the ongoing efforts of the grassroots organisers, sponsors, publishers and supporters who carried the torch to ensure Queensland’s tradition of recognising outstanding writing across many genres would continue,” she said.
Previous winners of the Premier’s Award (before it was abandoned) have included books which went on to world-wide acclaim.
- 2011 Reading Madame Bovary, Amanda Lohrey
- 2010 Summertime, J. M. Coetzee
- 2009 Wanting by Richard Flanagan
- 2008 The Spare Room by Helen Garner
- 2007 Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
- 2006 The Garden Book by Brian Castro
- 2005 The Turning by Tim Winton
- 2004 Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee
- 2003 Due Preparations For The Plague by Janette Turner Hospital
- 2002 The Volcano by Venero Armanno
- 2001 True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
- 2000 Drylands by Thea Astley
- 1999 Fredy Neptune: A Novel in Verse by Les Murray
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