MEDIA RELEASE: 2022 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award Longlist announced

15 books have been longlisted for the 2022 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award, including short story collections, YA fiction, crime fiction and poetry.

The award is one of Australia’s oldest literary awards and attracts an entry list larger and more diverse than any other literary prize in the country. This year’s competition received 230 eligible entries, which has been narrowed down to 15 by the judging panel.

The longlisted titles are:

• Tony Birch, Dark As Last Night [UQP]
• Tony Birch, Whisper Songs [UQP]
• Emily Bitto, Wild Abandon [Allen & Unwin]
• Michelle de Kretser, Scary Monsters [Allen & Unwin]
• Garry Disher, The Way It Is Now [Text Publishing]
• Rebecca Lim, Tiger Daughter [Allen & Unwin]
• Emily Maguire, Love Objects [Allen & Unwin]
• Clare Moleta, Unsheltered [Scribner Australia an Imprint of Simon & Schuster]
• Henry Reynolds, Truth-Telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement [NewSouth]
• John Shobbrook, Operation Jungle [UQP]
• Inga Simpson, The Last Woman in the World [Hachette Australia]
• Emily Spurr, A Million Things [Text Publishing]
• Robert Wainwright, Nellie [Allen & Unwin]
• Mark Wales, Survivor: Life in the SAS [Pan Macmillan Australia]
• Chloe Wilson, Hold Your Fire [Scribner Australia an Imprint of Simon & Schuster]

The Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award was founded in 1967 and recognises the best original book, in the judges' opinion, that was published in Australia in the previous calendar year for the first time. Submissions must deal with any aspect of Australian life and can be in any field or genre of writing, verse or prose.

It is valued at $20,000 and is presented by the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies. It is also coupled with the silver H.T. Priestley Memorial Medal. The Foundation is based at James Cook University and is funded through the generosity of the late Professor Colin Roderick CBE, his late wife Mrs Margaret Roderick, as well as donations and membership from the general public.

Last year’s winner was Sofie Laguna for Infinite Splendours (Allen & Unwin).

The shortlist will be announced in early August, with the winner’s name revealed at an annual function of the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies in October.

Longlist and judges’ comments:

Tony Birch, Dark As Last Night (UQP)

A beautifully written and carefully controlled collection. These short stories, some humorous, some devastating, cover family relations and alienations, friendship and love.

Tony Birch, Whisper Songs (UQP)

An extraordinarily spare and powerful collection of interwoven poems of 'skin and blood and country'. Themes of water, belonging, damage and recovery/remaining run through this collection. There is pain, loss and joy here expressed though a controlled arrangement of theme and resonance of language throughout the volume.

Emily Bitto, Wild Abandon (Allen & Unwin)

An extremely well-crafted account of a young Australian man's ‘escape’ to New York and then into US heartlands after the breakdown of his first serious relationship.  Echoing some great American literary landmarks, sometimes lyrical, a coming of age and into self-knowledge story mapped through the observation of the tensions and mysteries of the relationships of others.

Michelle de Kretser, Scary Monsters (Allen & Unwin)

Beautifully written and controlled back-to-back novels. One follows a young Australian woman’s experiences trying on identities in France in the 1980s. The other is a satirical tracing of an aspirational family in aspirational future in suburban Sydney, confronted with what they are willing to sacrifice and destroy to succeed, and of what such success might consist.  These meticulously crafted fictions meet across moments of racism and othering, surrender and ruthlessness.

Garry Disher, The Way It Is Now (Text Publishing)

Disher's novel is a compelling noir whodunnit examining contemporary Australia, its semi-rural life and attitudes. Provocative and deftly written, the pages almost turn themselves.

Rebecca Lim, Tiger Daughter (Allen & Unwin)

This Young Adult fiction offers a startlingly sharp first-person account of the challenges experienced by first generation ‘immigrant’ children in Australia. It traces the experience of a young woman in an ‘alien’ environment, and of children in tension with the expectations and background of their parents.

Emily Maguire, Love Objects (Allen & Unwin)

A visceral novel which deals with a traumatised and largely dysfunctional family focusing on Nic, a hoarder, and her niece.  The hidden secrets of the family are progressively unfolded in this controlled and harrowing narrative which illuminates how families can disintegrate and potentially reintegrate, with hope.

Clare Moleta, Unsheltered (Scribner Australia an Imprint of Simon & Schuster)

A depressing but compelling fiction of post climate apocalypse ‘Australia’ as a place socially divided into mostly uninhabitable zones, the resort of fragmented groups of displaced climate refugees seeking to move to unspecified more liveable zones. Part adventure story, part detective fiction, part warning.

Henry Reynolds, Truth-Telling: History, Sovereignty & the Uluru Statement (NewSouth)

An admirably clear and accessible account of the erroneous terms in which European/British settlement claimed sovereignty over the entire Australian continent. It unpacks the mismatch with their own contemporary laws and customs delegitimising the claim.  It offers another means of effecting The Uluru Statement of the Heart.

John Shobbrook, Operation Jungle (UQP)

A true crime/memoir which consists of a compelling and well-written account of late 1970s early 1980s Queensland and national narcotics investigations. Shobbrook outlines with shocking clarity the ways in which he became embroiled in the backlash of corrupt police and government networks.

Inga Simpson, The Last Woman in the World (Hachette Australia)

A beautifully written and observed near-future fiction about a reclusive artist forced to leave her isolation to confront the end of the world and the nameless horror which follows fire, ecological disaster and plague. The book is a quest, an apocalyptic allegory, an elegy and a faint gesture of hope.

Emily Spurr, A Million Things (Text Publishing)

A fantasy tale which imagines how a ten-year-old might deal with her mentally ill mother’s unthinkable, unavoidably present, departure. The narrative follows her attempts to structure a life, and her interactions with her problematic, if possibly recuperative, neighbour(s). Another exploration of the horrors and joys of family life and community.

Robert Wainwright, Nellie (Allen & Unwin)

Most people know the outlines of the career of the legendary nineteenth-century diva, Nellie Melba, but this biography offers new insights. What Melba went through to become the toast of the musical world is almost unbelievable to our twenty-first century eyes and how she handled it makes for remarkable reading.

Mark Wales, Survivor: Life in the SAS (Pan Macmillan Australia)

This memoir is a compelling account of life in the SAS during the Afghanistan War. Wales has provided an open and honest account of his successes and his failures, and those of the SAS and Senior Command. This testosterone filled story uncovers the frail and vulnerable human souls beneath the soldiers’ tough exteriors.

Chloe Wilson, Hold Your Fire (Scribner Australia an Imprint of Simon & Schuster)

A remarkably sharp collection of short stories, each with an edge of magic realism and the surreal, from the neighbour with the tiger to the half-sisters who go on a healing retreat which kills one of them.