In news just to hand (I've always wanted to write that) Minister Assisting the Premier on the Arts, Virginia Judge today congratulated Sydney author Margo Lanagan, who has been awarded the 2008 NSW Writer's Fellowship. Ms Lanagan will use the $20,000 fellowship to write a literary fantasy novel set in colonial northern NSW. Ms Judge said "the Rees Government is committed to supporting our writers and encouraging the creative industries. Margo Lanagan is a well-respected writer and deserving winner of this prestigious award. Over a 17-year career, Ms Lanagan has published novels for a diverse range of readers, including children, young people and adults". Ms Lanagan won the 2007 Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award (older readers) for Red Spikes. The 2008 selection committee of Anne Brewster (Chair), Stephen Measday and Mark Tredinnick also commended authors Georgia Blain, Chris Mansell and Mandy Sayer.

Nominations are invited for the New South Wales Premier's Translation Prize, presented every two years with the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. The prize is offered by the NSW Government through Arts NSW and the Community Relations Commission for a multicultural NSW in association with Sydney PEN. Valued at $30,000 the prize is open only to literary translators who translate from other languages into English. Translators should be able to demonstrate a body of literary work which has been published or performed in recent years. This work can include poetry, stage and radio plays, and fiction and non-fiction works of literary merit. Translators may nominate themselves, or be nominated by authors, agents, publishers, translation and literary associations, theatre companies or radio broadcasters. The closing date for nominations is Friday 5 December 2008. The winner will be announced in May 2009. Guidelines and nomination forms may be obtained from Awards Staff, Arts NSW PO Box A226, SYDNEY SOUTH NSW 1235 Ph (02) 9228 5533, Fax (02) 9228 4722 or Email: jean.moylan@arts.nsw.gov.au or download them from Website: www.arts.nsw.gov.au

Vietnamese Australian author Nam Le has won the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize for his first short story collection titled The Boat. It is one of the richest literary prizes in the world ($140,000) and is awarded for the best writer in the English language aged under 30. Judges described Nam Le as a "phenomenal literary talent and said his work demonstrated "a rare brilliance that is breathtaking both in the scope of its subject matter and the quality of its writing". The chair of the Dylan Thomas Prize judging panel, Peter Florence, said Nam tackles his own background and circumstances as well as that of others with a clear eye, focused intelligence and wonderful use of words. "He is, in this panel's opinion, a phenomenal literary talent, and I look forward to following his career as it progresses." Nam Le has previously won the Pushcart Prize, the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and fellowships from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Centre in Provincetown and Phillips Exeter Academy. Nam Le was one of six finalists. The other writers shortlisted for the prize, sponsored by Wales University, were British writers Ross Raisin (for God's Own Country), Edward Hogan (Blackmoor) and Caroline Bird (Trouble Came To The Turnip), and South African-born Ceridwen Dovey (Blood Kin) and Ethiopian Dinaw Mengestu (Children Of The Revolution).

Now in its 40th year, the Booker Prize has become one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world. Aravind Adiga has been named the winner of the $125,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2008 for his novel The White Tiger published by Atlantic. The thirty-three year old novelist was presented the prize at an awards ceremony at Guildhall, London. Adiga becomes the third debut novelist, and the second Indian debut novelist, to win the award in the forty year history of the prize. The two other debut novelists to have won the prize are DBC Pierre in 2003 for his novel Vernon God Little and Arundhati Roy in 1997 for The God of Small Things. Aravind Adiga's winning novel The White Tiger is described as a compelling, angry and darkly humorous novel about a man's journey from Indian village life to entrepreneurial success. It was described by one reviewer as an unadorned portrait of India seen from the bottom of the heap. The White Tiger is the ninth winning novel to take its inspiration from India or Indian identity. Read more about the author and book at www.themanbookerprize.com

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced the winners of the PM's Literary Awards. He said the judging panel are to be commended for the meticulous and thoughtful consideration they have given to the selection of Australian fiction and non-fiction entered in these new awards. Both winners receive a prize of $100,000 each. The winners are: Non-fiction: Ochre and Rust by Philip Jones takes Aboriginal artefacts from their museum shelves and traces their stories, revealing charged and nuanced moments of encounter in Australia's frontier history. Fiction: The Zookeepers' War by Steven Conte is a story of passion and sacrifice in a city battered by war. It is 1943 and each night in a bomb shelter beneath the Berlin Zoo an Australian woman, Vera, shelters with her German husband, Axel, the zoo's director. It confronts not only the brutality of war but the possibility of heroism. For more details on the awards go to: http://www.arts.gov.au/books/pmliteraryawards

The Crime Writers Association of Australia was set up in the mid 1990s to promote and encourage Australian crimewriting through the establishment of the Ned Kelly Awards. The 'annual Neddies' have subsequently become an eagerly anticipated fixture on the Australian literary scene and the winners of the Ned Kelly Awards 2008 are:

Best First Fiction: The Low Road, Chris Womersley (Scribe) Best Fiction: Shatter, Michael Robotham (Hachette Livre) Best Non-Fiction: Red Centre, Dark Heart, Evan McHugh (Penguin) Lifetime Achievement Award Marele Day. It is fantastic recognition for Michael Robotham who visited Orange as Ambassador for Books Alive. Check out the image gallery for the awards event at www.nedkellyawards.com

WooHoo!!!! Congratulations to Orange writer, artist and poet Angela Malone (author of Lucia's Measure) who has won the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize at Tasmanian Living Writers' Week for her work Drawing in the Birth Room. The Prize was created in 1996 in memory of the much loved Tasmanian poet whose work was highly acclaimed throughout Australia. Judges Dr Robyn Rowland and John Foulcher described the poem as "simple, unpretentious and without a stumble or jarring word. "It is a poem that could not be bypassed. There is a deep loveliness in it as it draws the line of a birth into the lines of a life. The idea that the child was drawing before birth, the places and experiences that the mother was living, is woven back into itself, as, three years later, the child draws her watery first landscape. The miracle of life unfolding is shown, not said, and the love that emanates from it is powerful." They said the poems they were looking for needed to leave the reader changed in some way – emotionally, intellectually or ideally both. A total of 250 poems were sent in to the competition with the final shortlist of 25 clearly publishable work. For the complete judges report go to the Island magazine website: http://www.islandmag.com/ Three Highly Commended poets were Mike Ladd (SA) for Bedroom Ceiling Fan, Kristen Lang (Tas) for Good Nighting the Mirror and Joan Kerr (Vic) for Retrospective. Read more about Angela's inspiration in the Central Western Daily: http://orange.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/angela-shows-she-has-the-write-stuff/1260401.aspx

Matilda Blog states the "Crime Downunder" weblog has reported on the shortlists for the 2008 Ned Kelly Awards for Best Australian crime fiction. The awards presentation is being held on Friday August 29th as a part of the Melbourne Writers' Festival. It is great to see Books Alive 2008 ambassador Michael Robotham on the list. And the nominees are:

Best Crime Fiction Among the Dead by Robert Gott (Scribe), Sucked In by Shane Maloney (Text), El Dorado by Dorothy Porter (Pan Macmillan) and Shatter by Michael Robotham (Hachette Livre).

Best First Crime Novel The Low Road by Chris Womersley (Scribe), A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (Penguin), Golden Serpent by Mark Abernethy (Allen & Unwin).

Best Non Fiction Underbelly: The Gangland War by John Silvester and Andrew Rule (Sly Ink), Killing Jodie by Janet Fife-Yeomans (Penguin) and Red Centre, Dark Heart by Evan McHugh (Penguin).

And you can find Matilda Blog here: http://www.middlemiss.org/weblog/archives/matilda/2008/07/2008_ned_kelly_1.html

Arts Minister Peter Garrett has announced the 14 Australian books short–listed for the inaugural 2008 Prime Minister's Literary Awards. Ninety-one fiction and 103 non-fiction entries were entered into the inaugural awards. Short list for Fiction is Burning In by Mireille Juchau, El Dorado by Dorothy Porter, Jamaica: A novel by Malcolm Knox, Sorry by Gail Jones, The Complete Stories by David Malouf, The Widow and Her Hero by Tom Keneally and The Zookeeper's War by Steven Conte. Short list for Non-fiction is A History of Queensland by Raymond Evans, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time by Clive James, My Life as a Traitor by Zarah Ghahramani with Robert Hillman, Napoleon: The Path to Power, 1769–1799 Philip Dwyer Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers by Philip Jones, Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer and Vietnam: The Australian War by Paul Ham. Visit www.arts.gov.au/pmliteraryawards for more details. The Australian Government has introduced the Prime Minister's Literary Awards to recognise the major contribution of Australian literature to the nation's cultural and intellectual life.

The Arts Minister Peter Garrett will announce the 2008 Prime Minister's Literary Awards short list at the Mitchell Library in Sydney at 2pm on 6th August. The Minister says the 2008 short list contains an impressive selection of quality Australian works from both established and emerging writers, reflecting a great wealth of local literary talent. The chair of the fiction judging panel, Professor Peter Pierce and panel members, broadcaster Margaret Throsby and author John Marsden have praised the quality of the 91 fiction entries. The Australian Government has introduced the Prime Minister's Literary Awards to celebrate the major contribution of Australian literature to the nation's cultural and intellectual life. These prestigious awards offer a tax free prize of $100,000 for the two fiction and non-fiction works judged to be of the highest literary merit. To view the Prime Minister's Literary Awards short list after 2pm on the 6th August visit the Federal Government's arts website www.arts.gov.au/pmliteraryawards