What’s the BJA I hear you say?
The Barbara Jefferis Award is a prize offered by the Australian Society of Authors for 'the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society'.
It’s worth $35,000; one of the highest prize values in the Australian literary community. It’s a substantial sum that really has the potential to kick an author onwards and upwards.
And for all those fella’s out there; it’s open to blokes too.
Who was Barbara Jefferis?
Barbara was a novelist, a founding member of the Australian Society of Authors and its first woman President, do check out this page for a bit more on her very interesting life.
The 2012 Shortlist
- Georgia Blain: Too Close to Home (Vintage)
- Claire Corbett: When We Have Wings (Allen & Unwin)
- Anna Funder: All That I Am (Penguin)
- Gail Jones: Five Bells (Vintage)
- Gillian Mears: Foal's Bread (Allen & Unwin)
- Frank Moorhouse: Cold Light (Vintage)
Note that Meg Mundell’s Black Glass , another speculative fiction title that flew under my radar, received a commendation.
1. Actually readers will remember this one nearly slipped under the radar, but this is the internet and I can reshape your memories as well as my own –mwuhahahah….ehem↩
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