Congratulations to the winners of the Kibble and Dobbie Literary Awards for 2018: Fiona McFarlane and Sarah Krasnostein!
The Kibble and Dobbie Literary Awards are open to Australian women writers who have published a book of fiction or non-fiction classifiable as ‘life writing’.
Fiona McFarlane has received $30,000 Nita B Kibble Literary Award (for an established author) for The High Places.
Here are 14 exquisite and brilliantly inventive stories from a singular voice in Australian literature. Fiona McFarlane’d proclivity for seeing the bizarre in the ordinary, her sense of mystery and wit, and her deftness with detail make her that prized thing – a seriously good writer who is also effortlessly readable.
Hawthorn bookseller Annie Condon says: ‘For readers who spurn the modern short story because they feel nothing happens in them, these are meaty stories, loaded with plot.’
Sarah Krasnostein has received the $5000 Dobbie Literary Award (for a first-time published author) for The Trauma Cleaner.
Born a boy in 1950s Melbourne, Sandra Pankhurst lived through an abusive childhood and a failed marriage with children, before beginning her life again as a drag queen, prostitute and gender reassignment patient in the 1980s. She now works as a trauma cleaner. In this fascinating biography, Krasnostein shares Sandra’s extraordinary life story.
Online bookseller Kara Nicholson says: ‘Krasnostein is an astute observer of human nature and her understated yet elegant prose is reminiscent of Helen Garner.’
You can find the full 2018 shortlist here.
