‘Night Games’ wins UK sports book award

28 November 2014 Books+Publishing

Night Games by Australian author Anna Krien (Black Inc.) has won the 2014 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award in the UK.

Krien’s book, which explores sporting culture and its attitudes towards sex, was selected from a shortlist of seven for the world’s richest prize for sports writing. Krien receives a £26,000 (A$47,900) cheque, as well as a £2500 (A$4605) bet with bookmakers William Hill.

The judging panel for the prize described Night Games as a ‘painstaking, intelligent, but above all, open-minded examination of an immensely complicated area’. Judge Alyson Rudd said: ‘Anna Krien seeks to understand why some sportsmen treat sex as a warped kind of sport in itself and women with little or no respect. Hopefully, if such men read her book they would be horrified at the repercussions of such behaviour.’

Krien told the Bookseller: ‘I always knew these issues resonated around the world. These cases have been around for a long time and the book has come when women are finding their voices and starting to fight back.’ However, Matt Phillips, editorial director of Krien’s UK publisher Yellow Jersey Press, observed that Night Games has been a difficult book to promote in the UK. ‘What’s been hardest is, publicity wise, trying to get people to cover it. Given how topical it is, it has been astonishing how hard it is to get people to pick it up.’

Krien is only the second woman to win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award in its 26-year history.

Category: Local news