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Kibble and Dobbie awards 2014 winners announced

The winners of this year’s Kibble and Dobbie Literary Awards have been announced.

The winner of the $30,000 Nita B Kibble Literary Award, which recognises the work of an established Australian female writer, is Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir by Kristina Olsson (UQP). Boy, Lost was selected from a shortlist of three titles, which included Letter to George Clooney (Debra Adelaide, Picador) and Mullumbimby (Melissa Lucashemko, UQP).

The $5000 Dobbie Award, which recognises the work of a first-published Australian female writer, was presented to Madness: A Memoir by Kate Richards (Penguin). Also shortlisted for the award were The Night Guest (Fiona McFarlane, Hamish Hamilton) and High Sobriety: My Year without Booze (Jill Stark, Scribe).

The winners were announced at the State Library of New South Wales.

Academic and editor Elizabeth Webby said on behalf of the judging panel: ‘Kristina Olsson’s Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir is an exceptional piece of life writing which recreates the fractured lives of her mother and half-brother with brilliant depth and truthfulness. Kate Richards’ book Madness: A Memoir recounts her struggles with mental illness in extraordinary language which is poetic in its intensity.’

Webby was joined on the judging panel by State Library of New South Wales research and discovery manager Maggie Patton and novelist Rosie Scott.

The Kibble and Dobbie Literary Awards were established by Nita Dobbie in honour of her aunt Nita B Kibble, the State Library of New South Wales’ first female librarian.

For more information about the Kibble and Dobbie Literary Awards, click here.

 

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Category: Local news