Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Kibble and Dobbie Awards for Women Writers Announced

From Austlit

Brenda Walker's The Wing of Night is the winner of the 2006 Nita B. Kibble Award.

The annual prize is awarded to a woman writer of 'a published book of fiction or nonfiction classifiable as "life writing".'

The Dobbie Award, a similar prize but for a first published book, went to Carrie Tiffany for Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living.

Walker was especially delighted with her win 'because it is a prize about women's connections, and my book is all about how rural women connected with each other when the men were away at war, and how the connections forced by the war led to unlikely alliances.' (Australian, 11 May 2006)

Judging panel chair Elizabeth Webby noted that 2006 was the first time in the Kibble's twelve-year history that all finalists were works of fiction. 'There have been several articles recently about the decline of literary fiction so it was a pleasure to see it was a particularly strong year for fiction.' (Sydney Morning Herald, 11 May 2006)

The other finalists were Heather Rose's The Butterfly Man and Kate Grenville's The Secret River

,

No comments: