Exciting News!

 

The January Stars has been shortlisted for the 2021 Prime Minister's Literary Awards!

It's such a thrill and an honour, especially as the authors on the shortlist are some of the Australian authors I most admire: Jaclyn Moriarty! Meg McKinley! Danielle Binks! The only one I don't know is Remy Lai, but her book looks absolutely delightful.

What a lovely day!

Another Medal for Crow Country

On Friday, my good mate Penni and I flew up to Sydney for the NSW Premier's Literary and History Awards. We were looking forward to a fancy dinner and a night away in a nice hotel, but we also couldn't help feeling quite sick with nerves. The Awards organisers had made the decision not to notify winners in advance - which meant that most of the short-listed authors and historians were there on the night, but it also made for a lot of tension in the room!

Well, as you can see from the picture above, it was a good outcome for Crow Country, which won the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature, and also for Penni's Only Ever Always, which won the Ethel Turner Prize for Young Adults. Being able to celebrate with one of my best friends made the night incredibly special; needless to say, we both found it quite hard to sleep that night, and the next morning we were wandering around still in a daze (and occasionally pinching each other).

This is what the judges said about Crow Country:

It seems that war friends form lifetime bonds, except when class and/or race enter the equation.  Such is the basis for this compelling story set in a small Australian country town.  Manslaughter, cultural secrets and unrequited love give rise to the tensions and ill-feelings that linger into the second generation. When Sadie unwillingly moves with her mother to the little town of Boort, the thirteen-year-old finds herself in conversation with a crow who embroils her in a mystery from her family’s past. When she time-slips into the body of her namesake of two generations ago she is caught up in a class-race conflict. Constable has cleverly let Sadie participate in her past history without changing it, which allows her to be the keeper of an enormous and troubling secret in her own time. Constable’s characters are beautifully rounded and real, from the family in the past to old Auntie Lily, an Aboriginal elder.

This is a multi-layered story, beautifully told, with themes interwoven through three generations; the prejudices and mores of the 1970s persist into the twenty-first century with black-white friendships frowned upon in both parents and children. The Indigenous connection to the land is a major theme, with a sacred circle of stones being exposed when drought causes the dam water to recede and the old town to be revealed. As in life, sport becomes the common bond as truths win out and secrets are fought for and kept. At the start of each chapter a small black crow sits on the black number while the cover illustration signals the stark ravages of drought with a large crow demanding attention as it does throughout the book.

The Patricia Wrightson Prize

Just when you thought the award season was safely over...

The shortlists for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards for 2012 were announced on Monday, and I was humbled and delighted to learn that Crow Country has been shortlisted for the Patricia Wrightson Award, for children's literature.

I wish I had more time to write about this properly, but I'm supposed to be working on a copy-edit and I'm on a strict deadline! But I just had to comment quickly on how special it feels to be nominated for an award named after Patricia Wrightson, and particularly for this book.

Patricia Wrightson is best remembered for her children's books which drew on Aboriginal myth and folklore to create a truly Australian literature, in a time when many books for children were firmly rooted in an inherited British culture. Many readers of my generation grew up on her evocative and beautiful fantasy stories. As time has passed, some have questioned whether Wrightson's use of indigenous material was in fact "appropriating" or "controlling", and when I set out to write Crow Country, I had to ask myself the same question about my own exploration of Aboriginal myth and philosophy. I don't have time to discuss this in much depth here, but Matthew Finch has written a fascinating series of posts on his blog which talk about Wrightson's project, and her legacy, in more detail.

It is of course a complicated, sometimes fraught, and difficult area. But these are conversations which we need to keep having. And meanwhile, I feel deeply honoured that one of my books is up for a prize named in memory of one of Australian's best children's writers, a wise woman who thought long and hard about our connection to this land, its first people, and its magic.

Three Men In A Bad Ending

From left: the original George, the original Harris and 'J' Jerome K. Jerome. Imaginary dog not pictured.

So I've been reading Three Men In A Boat to Alice. Written in 1889 by journalist and humorist Jerome K. Jerome, this slim and well-loved volume chronicles the adventures and misadventures of three young men (to say nothing of the dog, Montmorency) as they take a leisurely two week trip up the Thames.

There are lots of poetical descriptions of the landscape (which Alice found dull) and history lessons, as they pass various towns and grand houses (which Alice found moderately interesting, so long as we could tie it into Horrible Histories -- the Saxons had us pretty baffled though). But her favourite parts of the narrative were the tall tales the three friends share (like George getting lost in the maze) and the silly accidents that befall them along the way - the tins that won't open, the boat cover that refuses to go up, the huge fish in the pub that every man who wanders in claims to have caught, and which eventually (after an unfortunate accident in which Harris climbs on the back of a chair to examine said fish more closely, but knocks it down and smashes it into a million pieces) proves to have been made of plaster all along.

The three men were closely based on Jerome himself and his two friends Carl Hentschel (renamed Harris) and George Wingrove. Only Montmorency the dog was entirely invented, which is a fact I'm reluctant to pass on to Alice after her reaction to the ending of the book. You see, the three men jump ship. They've sworn themselves to a fortnight's holiday, but the weather in the last few days is so unrelentingly terrible, they abandon the boat with two days to go, take a train back to town and treat themselves to a slap-up meal and a trip to the theatre instead.

'What?' Alice was outraged. 'That is a terrible ending.'
She's been brooding about it for days, and last night when Jerome's name popped up in another context,* she said savagely, 'Huh! He wrote really bad endings.'
'What's wrong with the ending?'
'Those three men were really bad role models. They just gave up. They should have stayed until the very end.'

It emerged that she felt cheated of another two days' worth of anecdotage and misadventure. In her view, sending the three men home early was sheer laziness on the part of the author, and she is not prepared to forgive it.

* He featured in Who Do You Think You Are? as a crusading journalist who ruined Emilia Fox's ancestor's name. Long story.

In Other News:

Here is what the judges of the WA Premier's Book Awards said about Crow Country, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Young Adult award:

Kate Constable has taken a complex and contentious topic and handled it with a deftness that will be enjoyed by a casual reader but will be long considered by a thoughtful one. As race relations in this country are still being negotiated, this novel reminds us of past injustices while offering hope for a better future.

The winner of the Young Adult award was my dear friend Penni Russon, for Only Ever Always, which makes me very happy:

Mysterious, complex and challenging, Only Ever Always is a beautifully written story of parallel lives where Claire in the now, and Clara in a dystopian, timeless world, each face similar difficulties. Is one the dreamer, the other the dream, and if so, which? Changing voices, points of view and place make this a very satisfying novel for a reader willing to give it the close attention it deserves.

 Couldn't have put it better myself!  Congratulations, Pen.

Equals A Very Happy Camper

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Happy Book Week, everyone!

We Interrupt the Bluffer's Guide With Breaking News...

The CBCA 2012 Shortlists were announced yesterday.

It was a slightly surreal situation. At the time of the announcement I was attending my monthly kid lit book group with a group of fellow authors, aspiring authors and lovers of books for young people. One of our number brought in the long lists, released that morning, which members of the group fell upon with the eagerness of a gaggle of gulls on a handful of spilled chips, poring over the lists for a sight of our favourites and friends.

After that initial flurry, we were very restrained until the end of our meeting, whereupon the owner of the iPhone tried to find out who had made the shortlists. Couldn't get through... We wandered through the Convent toward the ladies' loos, still trying. No luck. I was actually in the bathroom when someone texted congratulations! and that was the first I knew that Crow Country had been shortlisted.

Congratulations indeed to all those on the shortlists and the Notable Books. There are so many worthy and deserving titles each year, there is almost always a little frisson of disappointment when a personal favourite isn't listed. So let's just take a moment amidst the celebrations to remember the other books that deserved be recognised, and congratulate them too.

Beautiful Thing

I knew that the shortlists for APA Book Design Awards had been released, but I didn't realise until the weekend that Josh Durham had been nominated for Crow Country in the category of Best Designed Children's Fiction. Ngarra Murray drew the powerful crow on the cover, but Josh is responsible for the rest.

I reckon it's at least partly because of the crows that perch on the chapter numbers inside - clever Josh!

But I mean, come on -- isn't it just the most beautiful cover ever? (Okay, I may be slightly biased...)

Some Happy News

Crow Country has been shortlisted for the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. Yay!

The rest of the shortlists can be found here. Congratulations to everyone.

Happy

Cicada Summer has been shortlisted for the 2010 Prime Minister's Literary Awards, the first time children's and young adult fiction has been included. You can find the full lists here.

The shortlists were announced yesterday at Readings bookshop in Carlton, by the (extremely tall) Minister for the Arts (and lots of other things) Peter Garrett. That's me in the front, fitting snugly under the Minister's armpit.

It's such a tremendous honour to be included in lists featuring such kid- and YA-lit luminaries, but most of all I am pleased for Cicada Summer itself, if that makes sense. Though it touches on big themes (grief and loss, family and friendship, growth and change and trust), Cicada Summer is in some ways such a small shy book that I was always a little worried it might be overshadowed by flashier, noisier stories. It's like seeing your quiet, introverted child being led out onto the dance floor to glow, just for a moment, in the spotlight.