Winner

The ASA is delighted to announce that the winner of the Barbara Jefferis Award 2010 is Kristina Olsson, for her book The China Garden (UQP).

"Without feeling the need to resolve every absence or mystery, Olsson gently suggests that it is always possible to make new things out of the past, however fractured or painful.” ~ from the judges' reading report. Download the full report here.

The award was presented at a ceremony at the Royal Oak Hotel in Balmain. View some pictures here. 

Shorlist

The shortlist for the 2010 Barbara Jefferis Award is as follows. The Award judges were Susan Martin, Gina Mercer and Elizabeth Webby.
  
Shortlist
 
Steven Carroll The Lost Life (HarperCollins)

Enza Gandolfo Swimming (Vanark Press)

Cate Kennedy The World Beneath (Scribe)

Kristina Olsson: The China Garden (UQP)

Susan Varga Headlong (UWA Publishing)
 
Highly Commended
 
Judith Lanigan A True History of the Hula Hoop (Picador)

Lili Wilkinson Pink (Allen & Unwin)

Download the full judges' reading report here.

About the Award

The Barbara Jefferis Award is offered annually 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”.

Barbara Jefferis was a feminist, a founding member of the Australian Society of Authors, its first woman President and, in the words of Thomas Keneally, “a rare being amongst authors, being both a fine writer but also organisationally gifted. She was a professional and internationally published writer long before most of us dreamed of such things”.

The Award is paid from the Barbara Jefferis Literary Fund, which was established by a bequest from Barbara Jefferis’s husband, ABC film critic John Hinde, who died in 2006. The Australian Society of Authors is Trustee of the Fund. In 2009 the Award is valued at $35,000.

Barbara Jefferis