![\"Alison](\"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Alison-Lester-Trickys-Bad-Day-author.jpg\")
Children’s author and illustrator, Alison Lester, has won the 2018 Melbourne Prize for Literature.<\/p>\nChildren’s author and illustrator, Alison Lester, has won the 2018 Melbourne Prize for Literature.<\/p>\n
The prize is given every three years and awards $60000 to a Victorian author who has made an outstanding contribution to Australian Literature.<\/p>\n
Alison Lester, much beloved author of over 25 picture books and young adult novels, began illustrating children’s books in 1979. Some of her best known books include\u00a0Imagine<\/a>, The Journey Home<\/a>, Kissed by the Moon<\/a>, Noni the Pony<\/a><\/em> and Magic Beach<\/em><\/a>. In 2005 her book,\u00a0Are We There Yet? A Journey Around Australia<\/em><\/a>, won the Children’s Book of the Year Award for Picture Books. She was also awarded the Inaugural Australian Children’s Laureate for Australian Children’s Literature Alliance from 2011 to 2013<\/p>\n The Melbourne Prize for Literature was presented at a special ceremony last night, the 14th of November. Other authors shortlisted for this year’s prize included Christos Tsiolkas, Tony Birch, Gideon Haig and Alexis Wright.<\/p>\n The judging panel –\u00a0 which included Mark Rubbo (Managing Director of Readings), Marieke Hardy (Melbourne Writer’s Festival artistic Director), Michael Williams (Director of The Wheeler Centre), creative producer Khalid Warsame and authors Andrea Goldsmith and Name Le – made the following statement about Alison Lester:<\/p>\n \u2018For more than 30 years, through an extraordinarily rich output, writer and illustrator Alison Lester has provided children in Australia and overseas with books that delight, educate and inculcate a love of reading. Her ongoing contribution to Australian literary life has been extended through her work with children in remote Indigenous communities and the Royal Children\u2019s Hospital.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Melbourne Literature Prize has been running for 14 years. Previous winners include Helen Garner, Alex Miller, Gerard Murnane and Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM.<\/p>\n An exhibition showing the finalists work will run at Federation Square until the 26th of November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Children’s author and illustrator, Alison Lester, has won the 2018 Melbourne Prize for Literature. The prize is given every three years and awards $60000 to a Victorian author who has made an outstanding contribution to Australian Literature. Alison Lester, much beloved author of over 25 picture books and young adult novels, began illustrating children’s books in 1979. Some of her best known books include\u00a0Imagine, The Journey Home, Kissed by the Moon, Noni the Pony and Magic Beach. In 2005 her book,\u00a0Are We There Yet? A Journey Around Australia, won the Children’s Book of the Year Award for Picture Books. She was also awarded the Inaugural Australian Children’s Laureate for Australian Children’s Literature Alliance from 2011 to 2013 The Melbourne Prize for Literature was presented at a special ceremony last night, the 14th of November. Other authors shortlisted for this year’s prize included Christos Tsiolkas, Tony Birch, Gideon Haig and Alexis Wright. The judging panel –\u00a0 which included Mark Rubbo (Managing Director of Readings), Marieke Hardy (Melbourne Writer’s Festival artistic Director), Michael Williams (Director of The Wheeler Centre), creative producer Khalid Warsame and authors Andrea Goldsmith and Name Le – made the following statement about Alison Lester: \u2018For more than 30…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":84489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[461,1249,9377,9379,9290,9381,9376,9380,4278,9378],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Social-Alison-Lester.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84484"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84516,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84484\/revisions\/84516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}