Arts SA presents the 2012 Adelaide Festival Awards For Literature which will be held during the Adelaide Writer’s Week. They have announced a shortlist.

Winners will be announced on March 3, 2012 by South Australian Premier, the Hon Jay Weatherill, in a presentation at the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in Adelaide during Adelaide Writers’ Week which is held as part of the Adelaide Festival.

Here are the shortlist via arts.sa.gov.au

Children’s literature award

Aaron Blabey, The Ghost of Miss Annabel Spoon (Viking)
Kate Constable, Crow Country (Allen & Unwin)
Bob Graham, A Bus Called Heaven (Walker Books)
Rosanne Hawke, Taj and the Great Camel Trek (University of Queensland Press)
Norman Jorgensen (illustrator James Foley), The Last Viking (Fremantle Press)
Lian Tanner, The Keepers: Museum of Thieves (Allen & Unwin)

Young adult fiction award

Georgia Blain, Darkwater (Random House Australia)
D. M. Cornish, Monster Blood Tattoo Book Three: Factotum (Omnibus Books)
Ursula Dubosarsky, The Golden Day (Allen & Unwin)
Scot Gardner, The Dead I Know (Allen & Unwin)
Doug MacLeod, The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher (Penguin Books)
Vikki Wakefield, All I Ever Wanted (Text Publishing)

Fiction award

Anna Funder, All That I Am (Hamish Hamilton)
Gail Jones, Five Bells (Vintage)
Alex Miller, Autumn Laing (Allen & Unwin)
Kim Scott, That Deadman Dance (Picador Australia)
Dominic Smith, Bright and Distant Shores (Allen & Unwin)
Rohan Wilson, The Roving Party (Allen & Unwin)

John Bray poetry award

Jennifer Compton, Barefoot (Picaro Press)
Diane Fahey, The Wing Collection: New & Selected Poems (Puncher &
Wattmann Poetry)
Les Murray, Taller When Prone (Black Inc.)
David Musgrave, Phantom Limb (John Leonard Press)
Tracy Ryan, The Argument (Fremantle Press)
Petra White, The Simplified World (John Leonard Press)

Non-Fiction award

James Boyce, 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia (Black Inc.)
Fiona Capp, My Blood’s Country (Allen & Unwin)
Jim Davidson, A Three Cornered Life: The Historian W.K. Hancock (University of New South Wales Press)
Mark McKenna, An Eye for Eternity; The Life of Manning Clark (The Miegunyah Press)
Hazel Rowley, Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage (Melbourne University Press) (deceased)
Brenda Walker, Reading By Moonlight: How Books Saved A Life (Penguin Books)

Wakefield Press Unpublished manuscript award

Henry Aybee, The Red Hat: An Australian Gothic Novel
Belinda Broughton, The Sparrow
Rachael Mead, The Sixth Creek
Margaret Merrilees, The First Week
Rob Walker, Tropeland

Jill Blewett playwright’s award

Nicki Bloom, A Cathedral
Elena Carapetis, Helen Back
Duncan Graham, Wolf Hunger

Barbara Hanrahan fellowship

Nicki Bloom, The Sun and the Other Stars
Carol Lefevre, A Maze in the Garden
David Sornig, You, Of All People

For further information, please contact Mandy-Jane Giannopoulos
Arts SA Senior Manager, Communications and Marketing:
08 8463 5454 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.