This week saw the announcement of the Indie Book awards at a ceremony in Sydney on Wednesday night.
The Indies began in 2008. Their aim is to highlight “the best Australian writing as chosen by Australian Independent Booksellers.”
The Indies are now the first national book award to be announced in Australia each year and as such, give us a taste of what may come in the Stella Prize, Miles Franklin and Children’s Book Council Awards to name just a few.
The awards are divided into various categories and this year’s winners are:
Fiction Winner: The Natural Way of All Things by Charlotte Wood (Allen and Unwin)
Non-Fiction: Reckoning by Magda Szubanski (Text Publishing)
Debut Fiction: Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar (Pan Macmillan)
Children’s Fiction: The Bad Guys, Episode 1 by Aaron Blabey (Scholastic Australia)
Young Adults: Cloudwish by Fiona Wood (Pan Macmillan)
From these five books, the winner for Book of the Year is selected.
The 2016 Indie Book of the Year award goes to Charlotte Wood and her “transformative” novel, The Natural Way of All Things.
In her acceptance speech, Wood emphasised the role that Independent bookshops have in the advancement of Australian literature. She considers them to be
“the safety vault for the seeds of our country’s cultural and intellectual life and your customers are the spreaders of those seeds out into the world.”
If you’d like to discuss any of these award winning books with our friendly staff, chat to Philip about The Natural Way of All Things (one his favourite books in the last 6 mnths) and ask Libby about her family connection to Salt Creek.
Tim and Bronwyn thoroughly enjoyed Reckoning, both being of an age to appreciate all Szubanski’s growing up in Australia in the 70’s stories. And Bronwyn is a little bit in love with everything that Aaron Blabey does, which now includes both books in the Bad Guys series.
Happy Reading!
