2019 Walkley Book Award Shortlist announced

The 2019 Walkley Book Award shortlist has just been announced, with three books by women all making the list.

The Walkley Book Award celebrates excellence in Australian non-fiction and long-form journalism and was established by The Walkley Foundation, a supportive body for Australian journalism.

The winner will be announced on November 28 – scroll down to see the 2019 Walkley Book Award shortlist!

Any Ordinary Day

by Leigh Sales

The day that turns a life upside down usually starts like any other, but what happens the day after? Dual Walkley Award-winner Leigh Sales investigates how ordinary people endure the unthinkable.

As a journalist, Leigh Sales often encounters people experiencing the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of the media. But one particular string of bad news stories – and a terrifying brush with her own mortality – sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable each of us is to a life-changing event. What are our chances of actually experiencing one? What do we fear most and why? And when the worst does happen, what comes next? Warm, candid and empathetic, this book is about what happens when ordinary people, on ordinary days, are forced to suddenly find the resilience most of us don’t know we have.

Buy it here

See What You Made Me Do

by Jess Hill

Women are abused or killed by their partners at astonishing rates- in Australia, almost 17 per cent of women over the age of fifteen – one in six – have been abused by an intimate partner.

In this confronting and deeply researched account, journalist Jess Hill uncovers the ways in which abusers exert control in the darkest – and most intimate – ways imaginable. She asks- What do we know about perpetrators? Why is it so hard to leave? What does successful intervention look like? Combining exhaustive research with riveting storytelling, See What You Made Me Do dismantles the flawed logic of victim-blaming and challenges everything you thought you knew about domestic and family violence.

Buy it here

Rusted Off: Why country Australia is fed up

by Gabrielle Chan

A big story from a small town.

Telling the story of Australia as it is today, Gabrielle Chan has gone hyper-local. In Rusted Off, she looks to her own rural community’s main street for answers to the big questions driving voters. Why are we so fed up with politics? Why are formerly rusted-on country voters deserting major parties in greater numbers than their city cousins? Can ordinary people teach us more about the way forward for government?

Buy it here

You can find more information about The Walkley Foundation and the 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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