Lovesong, by Alex Miller
The Bath Fugues, by Brian Castro
Jasper Jones, by Craig Silvey
The Book of Emmett, by Deborah Forster
Truth, by Peter Temple
Butterfly, by Sonya Hartnett
The Australian newspaper reports that Alex Miller let fly at the announcement do about the low profile of the Miles Franklin blaming Kevin Rudd for putting big money into the “Prime Ministers Award, which gets no publicity and will probably disappear when someone else becomes prime minister”.
He said the money should have been put into the Miles Franklin then Australia would have one premier award and not “a gaggle of prizes that people – and writers – would pay increasingly less attention to. Various Premier’s Literary Awards, for example, were essentially irrelevant”.
Miller seems to hold the Booker prize up as a role model. Whatever you think of the Booker it’s got publicity down to a fine art. But it also makes literature into a “winner takes all” roulette wager.
I agree the Miles Franklin Award has cache and should be promoted more (but, like the Booker, book sales here DO go up for the MF winner) but isn’t it also better to have a range of smaller (and regional) prizes to share the sunshine?
See the article in The Australian and also the A Pair of Ragged Claws blog comment here.
On another controversy, it’s good to see the women back (if only comprising 33%).