The 2020 Western Australian Premier’s Book Award winners are here!

The winners of the 2020 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards were announced yesterday at the State Library of Western Australia (SLWA). The awards support, develop and recognise excellence in Western Australian writing, with only three of the four categories open to authors from WA. The Daisy Utemorrah Award is open to First Nations writers from all states and territories.

Scroll down to see all of the 2020 Western Australian Premier’s Book Award winners!

Premier’s Prize for an Emerging Writer ($15,000)

Fathoms: The world in the whale by Rebecca Giggs (Scribe)

When Rebecca Giggs encountered a humpback whale stranded on her local beach in Australia, she began to wonder how the lives of whales might shed light on the condition of our seas. How do whales experience environmental change? Has our connection to these fabled animals been transformed by technology? What future awaits us, and them? And what does it mean to write about nature in the midst of an ecological crisis?

In Fathoms: the world in the whale, Giggs blends natural history, philosophy, and science to explore these questions with clarity and hope.

Buy it here

Premier’s Prize for Writing for Children ($15,000)

How to Make a Bird by Meg McKinlay, illustrated by Matt Ottley (Walker Books)

From award-winning author Meg McKinlay and celebrated artist Matt Ottley comes a moving and visually stunning picture book that celebrates the transformative power of the creative process from inception through recognition to celebration and releasing into the world. We shadow the protagonist as she contemplates the blue print of an idea, collects the things that inspire from the natural world to shape a bird. And breathes life into it before letting it fly free. It shows how small things, combined with a little imagination and a steady heart, can transform into works of magic.

Buy it here

The Daisy Utemorrah Award for Unpublished Indigenous Junior and YA Writing ($15,000)

‘Dirran’ by Carl Merrison & Hakea Hustler

Western Australian Writer’s Fellowship ($60,000)

Sisonke Msimang, for the proposal of a novel which traces the stories of three African and Indian-heritage families who settle in Perth in the 1970s, exploring 50 years of change in Australian multiculturalism.

Congratulations to all of the 2020 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards!

Find out more about the WA Premier’s Book Awards here

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Olivia Fricot

Olivia Fricot (she/her) is Booktopia's Senior Content Producer and editor of the Booktopian blog. She has too many plants and not enough bookshelves, and you can usually find her reading, baking, or talking to said plants. She is pro-Oxford comma.

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