2015 Kibble Literary Awards winners

Congratulations to the winners of the Kibble Literary Awards, 2015.

Kibble Literary Award for an established author
Joan London, The Golden Age - Vintage Australia
It is 1954 and thirteen-year-old Frank Gold, refugee from wartime Hungary, is learning to walk again after contracting polio in Australia. At The Golden Age Children's Polio Convalescent Home in Perth, he sees Elsa, a fellow patient, and they form a forbidden, passionate bond. The Golden Age becomes the little world that reflects the larger one, where everything occurs: love and desire, music, death, and poetry. It is a place where children must learn they're alone, even within their families.


Dobbie Literary Award for a first time published author 
Ellen van Neerven, Heat and Light - University of Queensland Press
In this award-winning work of fiction, Ellen van Neerven takes her readers on a journey that is mythical, mystical and still achingly real.

Over three parts, she takes traditional storytelling and gives it a unique, contemporary twist. In 'Heat', we meet several generations of the Kresinger family and the legacy left by the mysterious Pearl. In 'Water', van Neerven offers a futuristic imagining of a people whose existence is under threat. While in 'Light', familial ties are challenged and characters are caught between a desire for freedom and a sense of belonging.


About the Kibble Awards
Amongst some of Australia's most prestigious awards for women writers, the Nita B Kibble Literary Awards (the Kibble Awards) aim to encourage Australian women writers to improve and advance literature for the benefit of our community.

The Awards recognise the works of women writers of fiction or non-fiction classified as 'life writing'. This includes novels, autobiographies, biographies, literature and any writing with a strong personal element.

Shortlist: 
Kibble Literary Award for an established author

 Warning: The Story of  Cyclone Tracy by Sophie Cunningham
 This House of Grief by Helen Garner
 The Golden Age by Joan London

Shortlist: 
Dobbie Literary Award for a first time published author 
The Strays by Emily Bitto
 Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven
 After Darkness by Christine Piper




















The 2015 longlist is:

Kibble Literary Award for an established author ($30,000 prize)
Sophie Cunningham Warning: The Story of
Cyclone Tracy Text Publishing
Helen Garner This House of Grief Text Publishing
Elizabeth Harrower In Certain Circles Text Publishing
Joan London The Golden Age Vintage Australia
Favel Parrett When the Night Comes Hachette Australia
Wendy Scarfe Hunger Town Wakefield Press

Dobbie Literary Award for a first time published author ($5,000 prize)
Maxine Beneba Clarke Foreign Soil Hachette Australia
Emily Bitto The Strays Affirm Press
Christine Piper After Darkness Allen & Unwin
Nicole Smith Sideshow Xoum Publishing Miriam Sved Game Day Picador
Ellen van Neerven Heat and Light University of Queensland Press