Prime Minister's Literary Awards
The Prime Minister's Literary Awards were established in 2008 to celebrate outstanding literary talent in Australia and these author's contribution to the nation's cultural and intellectual life.
A prize of $80,000 is awarded to the winner in each of the six categories, and $5000 is presented to each author who is shortlisted.
Shop the nominees in each category below.
Domestic Interior by Fiona Wright
$29.99 NZD
Category: Poetry
Many of the poems in Domestic Interior were written around the same time as Fiona Wright's award-winning collection of essays Small Acts of Disappearance, and they share with that work her acute sensitivity to the details that build our everyday world, and hold us in thrall, in highly charged moments of ...Show more
Dragonfly Song by Wendy Orr
$18.99 NZD
Category: Children's Fiction | Reading Level: Children's - Grade 4-6, Age 9-11
There are two ways of looking at Aissa's story. She's the miracle girl who escaped the raiders. Or she's the cursed child who called the Bull King's ship to the island. The firstborn daughter of a priestess is cast out as a baby, and after raiders kill her adopted family, she is abandoned at the gates o ...Show more
Evatt : A Life by John Murphy
$59.99 NZD
Category: Prize for Australian History
John Murphy's Evatt: A life is a biography of Australian parliamentarian and jurist HV Evatt. Remembered as the first foreign minister to argue for an independent Australian policy in the 1940s and for his central role in the formation of the UN, Evatt went on to be the leader of the Labor party in the ...Show more
Feathers by Phil Cummings; Phil Lesnie (Illustrator)
$18.99 NZD
Category: Children's Fiction
As a lone sandpiper's feathers drift down from the sky during its long flight, they shine a powerful light on the importance of kindness, hope and security for the children below. It is time for the sandpiper journey to its winter home, half a world away. Along the arduous journey, it loses a feather wh ...Show more
Figgy Takes the City by Tamsin Janu
$18.99 NZD
Category: Children's Fiction
Both Nana and Figgy receive scholarships to attend the Hope College in Ghana's big city, Accra. Figgy and Nana will have to leave behind the village and family they love, meet lots of new people and learn new things. Figgy does not want to go, but Grandma Ama says she must. But Nana begins acting strang ...Show more
Figgy and the President by Tamsin Janu
$17.00 NZD
Category: Children's Fiction
Figgy and Nana love to talk about their future. Nana wants to be President of Ghana. Deciding on a career isn't as easy for Figgy, but then she lands the role of a lifetime as an actress in a film. When Figgys Mama shows up, sick and expecting a baby, and Nanas father takes him away, Figgy has more impo ...Show more
First Person by Richard Flanagan
$29.99 NZD
Category: Fiction
A young and penniless writer, Kif Kehlmann, is rung in the middle of the night by the notorious con man and corporate criminal, Siegfried Heidl. About to go to trial for defrauding the banks of $700 million, Heidl proposes a deal- $10,000 for Kehlmann to ghost write his memoir in six weeks.But as the wr ...Show more
Forgetting Foster by Dianne Touchell
$22.99 NZD
Category: Young Adult Fiction | Reading Level: 13+
Foster suddenly recognised the feeling that rolled over him and made him feel sick. It was this: Dad was going away somewhere all on his own. And Foster was already missing him...Foster Sumner is seven years old. He likes toy soldiers, tadpole hunting, going to school and the beach. Best of all, he like ...Show more
Hark, It's Me, Ruby Lee! by Lisa Shanahan
$19.99 NZD
Category: Children's Fiction
The story of an irrepressible little girl and her very big imagination, from two award-winning creators of Australian picture books - Lisa Shanahan and Binny Ruby Lee is a little girl with a very big imagination. Every week Ruby's teacher, Mrs Majestic-Jones, asks special people to do special jobs in he ...Show more
Hidden in Plain View - The Aboriginal People of Coastal Sydney by Paul Irish
$54.99 NZD
Category: Prize for Australian History
Contrary to what you may think, local Aboriginal people did not lose their culture and die out within decades of Governor Phillip's arrival in Sydney in 1788. Aboriginal people are prominent in accounts of early colonial Sydney, yet we seem to skip a century as they disappear from the historical record, ...Show more
Home in the Rain by Bob Graham
$0.00 NZD
Category: Children's Fiction
Waiting out a storm by the highway inspires a name for an unborn baby sister in a tender, exquisitely observed tale from the incomparable Bob Graham. The rain is pouring down in buckets, and Francie and her mom are on their way home from Grandma's. As the little red car pulls into a picnic area to wait ...Show more
Indigenous and Other Australians Since 1901 by Tim Rowse
$54.99 NZD
Category: Prize for Australian History
As Australia became a nation in 1901, no one anticipated that 'Aboriginal affairs' would become an on-going national preoccupation. Not 'dying out' as predicted, Aboriginal numbers recovered and - along with Torres Strait Islanders - they became an articulate presence, aggrieved at colonial authority's ...Show more