Known affectionately as the 'The Nib' , The $20,000 CAL Waverley Library Award for Literature, is Australia's premier literary award acknowledging excellence in research by Australian authors writing literary works. The award is now in its 8th year, and with a new sponsor, Copyright Agency Limited’s (CAL) Cultural Fund providing increased prize money. Good on CAL for supporting an important award in an oft neglected literary niche. Waverley is a local council located in the major Australian City of Sydney. Presiding over the 2008 award, Mayor is Sally Betts (left).

The Award recognises excellence in research in the creation of a literary work of merit, published during the 12 months prior to 30 June. It was launched at the 2002 Sydney Writers Festival. Other factors considered by the judges include readability, innovation, knowledge and literary merit, and value to the community. The Award is open to all kinds of fiction and non-fiction by authors who are citizens or permanent residents of Australia.

The distinguished playwright and author, Alex Buzo, was a foundation committee member who contributed significantly to the establishment and success of the award.

Previous winners of the award are Tim Low (2002), Barry Hill (2003), Geoffrey Blainey (2004), Helen Garner (2005), Gideon Haigh (2006) and John Bailey (2007), Christopher Koch in 2008.

2008 Shortlists | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 |2002

Nib 2009 Winner & Shortlist

The authors have been chosen from a near record 160 nominations drawn from all Australian states. Each of the shortlisted authors will received the Alex Buzo Prize and the winner recieved the 2009 'The Nib': CAL Waverley Library Award for Literature which carries a major prize of $20,000. Commentary Award Tragic Blog>>

Winner -

Robert Gray The Land I Came Through Last - [Giramondo Publishing] -The title of Robert Gray’s memoir is from a poem by Christopher Brennan, ‘The land I came thro’ last was dumb with night / a limbo of defeated glory, a ghost.’ There is more of glory than defeat, however, in this work of memory by a writer who is himself one of Australia’s best-known poets. The unrivalled ability with imagery and the expression of emotion characteristic of Gray’s poetry, also distinguish his prose, in his account of his parents’ painful marriage, and his own childhood, growing up on the north coast of New South Wales. The family’s resilience, and the beauty of the coastal landscape, are evoked with striking economy and awareness. Beyond, the book offers the portrait of a period, told through the characters of the ‘extreme people’ that have influenced Gray – including his grandparents, aunts and lovers, and artists and writers such as Patrick White, Bruce Chatwin and Les Murray.

Commentary Award Tragic Blog

2009 Shortlist

Greg de Moore Tom Wills [Allen & Unwin] - This is the story of Tom Wills ? flawed genius, sporting libertine, fearless leader and agitator, and the man most often credited with creating the game we now know as Australian Rules football.

Sent to the strict British Rugby School in 1850 at fourteen, Tom returned as a worldly young man whose cricket prowess quickly captured the hearts of Melburnians. But away from the adoring crowds, in the desolation of the Queensland outback, he experienced first-hand the devastating effects of racial tension when his father was murdered in the biggest massacre of Europeans by Aboriginal people. Yet five years later, Tom coached the first Aboriginal cricket team.

Tom Wills lived hard and fast, challenging authority on and off the field. But when his physical talents began to fade, the psychological demons that alcohol and adrenaline had kept at bay surged to the fore, driving him to commit the most brutal of suicides. He was forty-four and destitute.

Greg de Moore has carefully pieced together Tom's life, giving us an extraordinary portrait of the life and times of one of our first sporting heroes, a man who lived by his own rules and whose contribution to Australian history has endured for more than 150 years.

Robert Gray The Land I Came Through Last - [Giramondo Publishing] -The title of Robert Gray’s memoir is from a poem by Christopher Brennan, ‘The land I came thro’ last was dumb with night / a limbo of defeated glory, a ghost.’ There is more of glory than defeat, however, in this work of memory by a writer who is himself one of Australia’s best-known poets. The unrivalled ability with imagery and the expression of emotion characteristic of Gray’s poetry, also distinguish his prose, in his account of his parents’ painful marriage, and his own childhood, growing up on the north coast of New South Wales. The family’s resilience, and the beauty of the coastal landscape, are evoked with striking economy and awareness. Beyond, the book offers the portrait of a period, told through the characters of the ‘extreme people’ that have influenced Gray – including his grandparents, aunts and lovers, and artists and writers such as Patrick White, Bruce Chatwin and Les Murray.

David Kilcullen The Accidental Guerrilla [Scribe Publications] -David Kilcullen is the world's foremost expert on this way of war, and in The Accidental Guerrilla, the senior counterinsurgency advisor to the Pentagon and architect of 'the Surge', surveys war as it is actually fought in the contemporary world. Colouring his account with gripping battlefield experiences that range from the jungles and highlands of South and Southeast Asia to the mountains of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to the dusty towns of the Middle East and the horn of Africa, this book will change the way we think about war. It is based on extensive fieldwork in the world's most dangerous places and examines how terrorists exploit traditional societies and explores the backlash created by external military intervention.

Marina Larsson Shattered Anzacs [UNSW Press] - There is no book about disabled soldiers in Australia after the First World War, much less the impact of war disability upon their family members. A fresh perspective on the First World War, this book moves beyond standard repatriation histories to explore the personal dimensions of war disability within families. The book offers an alternative story of Anzac; and presents a 'hidden history' that will resonate with many ordinary Australian families whose lives have been affected by war. "Shattered Anzacs" tells the untold story of thousands of Australian families who welcomed home disabled soldiers after the First World War. It offers a poignant account of the impact of physical injury and shell shock upon returned soldiers, and explores the profound and lasting consequences of disablement for their kin in the 1920s and 1930s. Drawing the reader into the emotional interior of family life, it evocatively brings to light the daily struggles of Australia's 90,000 'changed men', and reveals the significant burdens carried by their family members.

David Levell Tour to Hell [University of Queensland Press] - Tour to Hell tells the riveting and often tragic stories of the convicts who escaped, or tried to escape, Australia's early penal settlements. With the continent a blank slate to the newcomers, a 'convict escape mythology' developed, suggesting sanctuaries in the bush and short overland journeys to other countries. History at its rollicking best.

John McDonald Art of Australia [Pan Macmillan] - In this first volume of a brilliant new history of Australian art, John McDonald, the highly-regarded art critic of the Sydney Morning Herald, takes us from the times of pre-history, settlement and exploration, to the end of the colonial era. In the first comprehensive overview of the field since the 1960s, McDonald reassesses the reputations of many leading artists, and links their achievements with the broader patterns of social history and ideas.

Along with in-depth discussions of major works, the narrative teems with characters and anecdotes from the era of the First Fleet to that of the Australian Impressionists. The story of Australian art is told in an more vivid and engaging style.

Christopher Koch Wins 2008 Nib” with The Memory Room.

26th November - Longlisted for the Miles, Shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards and currently on the Dublin IMPAC Interantional Longlonglonglist (146 books) , Tasmanian author, Christopher Koch (left), has reeled in a big-one with the well regarded CAL Waverley Library Award, aka 'The Nib'. It is the first time that a novel has won the seven year-old award.

Six authors had made the shortlist cut from a record 165 nominations drawn from all Australian states for this years prize. Each of those received the Alex Buzo Prize with Mr. Koch $20,000 better off for a bit of Xmas cheer and a Blue Ribbon.

2008 'Nib' Shortlist

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Waleed Aly People Like Us (Picador/Pan Macmillan)
Paul Ham Vietnam - The Australian War (Harper Collins)
Catherine Jinks The Dark Mountain (Allen & Unwin)
Christopher Koch The Memory Room (Vintage/ Random House)- Winner
Kathy Marks Pitcairn - Paradise Lost (Fourth Estate/ Harper Collins)
Babette Smith Australia's Birthstain (Allen & Unwin)

Christopher Koch The Memory Room (Vintage/ Random House)

What is a spy? Are they born, or are they made?'
With these words, Vincent Austin analyses his future occupation. Some spies are made,he says, but his kind is born. He is devoted to secrecy for its own sake.

Vincent is orphaned early, and his boyhood in Tasmania is spent with an elderly aunt.His fascination with secrecy and espionage - and much else besides - is shared to an uncanny degree by Erika Lange, daughter of a post-World War German immigrant. She too has lost her mother, and she and Vincent see themselves as twin spirits, inhabiting a shared, platonic world of fantasy and ritual.

At University, Vincent aims to enter Foreign Affairs - an ambition shared by his easygoing friend Derek Bradley. However, in his final year, Vincent is recruited by ASIS - Australia's overseas secret intelligence service - and his adolescent dream becomes reality. Erika becomes a journalist, eventually entering the overseas service as a press officer. She is an attractive and magnetic woman, but her emotional life is chaotic. She, Vincent and Bradley meet again in 1982, when they are in their thirties, and have all been posted to the Australian Embassy in Beijing. Here, Erika and Bradley begin an affair which is ultimately doomed to fail. At the same time,

Vincent attempts an espionage coup which ends in disaster for himself and Bradley. Both men are expelled from China, and are based in Canberra, where Vincent is confined to the ASIS Registry: the 'memory room' of the book's title. This is the year of Star Wars, and the final phase of the Cold War. Erika, also returning to Australia, becomes a television journalist, and enjoys a period of national prominence. The fantasies of youth have become reality for Erika and Vincent, and lead to a tragic climax for them both. It is left to Bradley, who inherits Vincent's diaries, to contemplate their fate.

Although The Memory Room deals with espionage, its aims go far beyond those of a thriller. A psychological study of a brilliant but eccentric secret intelligence operative, it is also an exploration of the mystical nature of secrecy itself, and of the consequences of a shared obsession.

About Christopher Koch
Christopher Koch was born and educated in Tasmania. For a good deal of his life he was a broadcasting producer, working for the ABC in Sydney. He has lived and worked in London and elsewhere overseas. He has been a full time writer since 1972, winning international praise and a number of awards for his six previous novels, many of which are translated in a number of European countries. One of his novels, The Year of Living Dangerously, was made into a fillm by Peter Weir and was nominated for an Academy Award. He has twice won the Miles Franklin award for fiction: for The Doubleman and Highways to a War . In 1995 Koch was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contribution to Australian literature.

Judges comments: To become a spy, one must develop a taste for secrecy as well as learning the skills of concealment. Yet for Christopher Koch fascination lies in the nature of the psychological need which might propel a person into a life of espionage. In exploring the impulses which lead his characters, Vincent Austin and Erica Lange, from an innocent world of make-believe to real-life deceptions in the context of the last years of the Cold War, and then to tragedy, he has researched in convincing detail the actual operations of professional secret agents. His novel also depicts China with the same evocative richness found in his descriptions of Tasmania, Sydney, Canberra,
and the Monaro.

Reviews of The Memory Room Nikki Barrowclough SMH | Simon Leys The Australian | Leonie Kramer The Australian

Waleed Aly People Like Us (Picador/Pan Macmillan)

No two civilisations have spoken so many words about each other in recent years as those of Islam and the West. And no two seem to have communicated less. People Like Us confronts the themes that define this chasm head-on: women, jihad, secularism, terrorism, reformation and modernity. Its piercing examination of these subjects reveals our thoughtless and destructive tendency to assume that the world's problems could be solved if only everyone became more like us. The result is deep mutual ignorance and animosity, reinforced by both Muslim and Western commentators. As a Muslim born and raised in Australia, Waleed Aly stands at the intersection of these two civilisations. In this book, he draws on his knowledge of Western and Islamic intellectual traditions to present an analysis that is surprising and challenging, but always enlightening.

Judges comments: The position of the Islamic religion in modern-day society poses a question of the utmost urgency. While much has been written about it, most has come from extremists of one persuasion or another. In balanced, elegant prose, Waleed Aly shows how tensions are brought about by the mutual inability of Muslims, Christians and secular Westerners to understand one another's motives. Habits of dishonesty and self-deception are to blame, he suggests, for this mutual misunderstanding, which can only be solved, in his words, by "people like us".

Paul Ham Vietnam - The Australian War (Harper Collins

‘Surely God weeps’, an Australian soldier wrote in despair of the conflict in Vietnam. But no God intervened to shorten the years of carnage and devastation in this most
controversial of wars.

Drawing on hundreds of accounts by soldiers, politicians,aid workers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people,Paul Ham reconstructs for the first time the full history of our longest military campaign. From the commitment to engage, through the fight over conscription and the rise of the anti-war movement, to the tactics and horror of the battlefield, Ham exhumes the truth about this politicians’ war—which affected so deeply the lives of 50,000 Australian servicemen and women.

More than 500 soldiers were killed and thousands wounded. Those who made it home returned to a hostile and ignorant country and a reception that scarred them forever. This is their story. (HarperCollins)

The author
Paul Ham is the author of Vietnam: The Australian War and Kokoda (2004). He is the Australia correspondent for The Sunday Times of London, and has written regularly for The Financial Times, The Bulletin, The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald. He has a Masters Degree in Economic History from the London School of Economics and studied journalism and English literature at Charles Sturt and Sydney Universities. Born and educated in Sydney, he lived
in London for many years, where he worked for the Financial Times Group and The Sunday Times. In 1990 he established a publishing company which specialised in financial newsletters. On his return to Australia in 1998, he set his mind to pursuing a lifelong interest in 20th century history—particularly Australia’s
involvement in military conflict.

Judges comments: No war before or since has had such an impact on Australian culture as the Vietnam war. As Paul Ham puts it, "in the late 1960s the war touched everyone." Thus there is far more to this exhaustively researched account of Australia's military contribution to the war than recreations of battles and discussions of tactics, even though these are expertly done. This book is also a comprehensive portrait of the nation which had sent its soldiers abroad to fight for a cause not everyone could support, a nation increasingly divided against itself, where an unwillingness to face the truth added to the divisions.

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Catherine Jinks The Dark Mountain (Allen & Unwin)

authors website

Based on a true story this is a compelling and intriguing family saga - a novel of closely guarded family secrets, public shame and private passion.

Description

The story of two fiercely strong women, mother and daughter, one determined never to explain her choices and the other equally as determined to dig deeply and unrelentingly for the truth.

Charlotte Atkinson was born into a life of privilege. Raised by a widowed mother on a vast and wealthy estate near Sutton Forest, New South Wales, she and her three siblings enjoyed an idyllic early childhood in the great stone house still known today as Oldbury.

But in the summer of 1836, a violent incident in the Belanglo wilderness set off a chain of events that transformed Charlotte's existence. Inexplicably, as a result of this affair, her mother was prompted to marry again - thereby surrendering her property, fortune and offspring to Charlotte's vicious and degenerate new stepfather, George Barton. His presence turned Oldbury into a place of madness and terror, casting a shadow so long that it continued to haunt Charlotte for years after his somewhat mysterious death.

Based on fact, this astonishing tale features a memorable cast of characters, including Australia's first female novelist and one of the country's earliest, most notorious serial killers. Jinks confirms her reputation as a masterful storyteller with a meticulously researched exploration of public shame and private passion, set against the brooding backdrop of the Southern Highlands.

Judges comments: Louisa Atkinson was the first Australian-born woman novelist, and in her short life she was also a successful journalist and a respected naturalist. Yet her childhood was shadowed by the death of her father and her mother's unhappy remarriage. Using the historical framework of Atkinson's biography, and meticulous research into every aspect of 19th century life in Australia, Catherine Jinks writes in the persona of Atkinson's older sister Charlotte to create a novel of perfect construction and powerful themes, including murder, madness, and the lasting impact concealment of the truth can have on every member of a family.

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Kathy Marks Pitcairn - Paradise Lost (Fourth Estate/ Harper Collins)

The Island where Fletcher Christian's descendants live, was until recently a rarely visited English-run Polynesian outpost perched in the South Pacific; a tropical paradise. But in 1999, British police, alerted by unsettling reports of a rape, descended on the island. Their investigation developed into a major inquiry that revealed that Pitcairn was the site of widespread and horrific sexual abuse instigated by the island men on girls as young as twelve. Scarcely a man on the island was untainted by the allegations, and almost none of the women had escaped, though most residents feigned ignorance, even when their own daughters were abused. Abusers included the magistrates and police officers as well as brothers and uncles. Few of the victims were able to leave the island; those who did never went back. Kathy Marks was one of a handful of journalists permitted to live on the island while she reported on the ensuing trial and witnessed Pitcairn's domestic workings first hand. In this riveting account, she documents a society gone badly astray, leaving lives shattered, codes broken and a paradise truly lost.

About the author

Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific correspondent for the UK’s Independent, was one of only six journalists to be permitted to live on Pitcairn Island during the Pitcairn rape trials. A small, remote island in the South Pacific, and home to the descendants of Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian, Pitcairn became the centre of attention for the world’s media after allegations of rape surfaced in 2000. While reporting on the ensuing trials, Kathy witnessed first-hand life on the island, and she had daily encounters – not all of them civil – with the accused men and their families.

Judges comments: In 1999, a police investigation of a rape on the remote Pitcairn Island set a chain of events in motion which ended with thirteen men, out of a population of forty-seven, facing more than ninety charges of rape and child abuse. Kathy Marks was one of only six journalists who were allowed onto the island to report on the trials. Her book is more than just a gripping account of a highly unusual series of court cases; it is also a well-researched history of the cliff-bound speck of land originally settled
by the Bounty mutineers, and an atmospheric description of a uniquely isolated community, one which perhaps through necessity had long avoided facing the truth.

Babettte Smith Australia's Birthstain (Allen & Unwin)

authors website

Why is it that Australians are still misled by myths about their convict heritage? Why are so many familyhistorians surprised to find a convict ancestor in their family trees? Why did an entire society collude to cover up its past?Babette Smith traces the stories of hundreds of convicts over the 80 years of convict transportation to Australia. Putting a human face on the convicts' experience, she paints a rich picture of their crimes in Britain and their lives in the colonies. We know about Port Arthur, Norfolk Island, chaingangs and floggings, but this was far from the experience of most. In fact, most convicts became good citizens and the backbone of the new nation. So why did we need to hide them away?

Australia's Birthstain rewrites the story of Australia's convict foundations, revealing the involvement of British politicians and clergy in creating a birthstain that reached far beyond convict crimes. Its startling conclusion offers a fresh perspective on our past.'Babette Smith's arguments will be hotly debated, but there is no doubting the fascination or drama of this study of the stain we pretend is not there.'

Thomas Keneally, Booker prize winning novelist and author of The Commonwealth of Thieves'

Australia's Birthstain explodes many myths of the past and gives us a much better understanding of what actually happened, and the effects of this on the Australian community...should be read by everyone interested in Australian history.'A.G.L. Shaw, author of Convicts and the Coloniesand formerly Professor of History, Monash University, Victoria'A thoughtful, challenging and well-researched study, this book shows how Australians have viewed their convict past. Through a sample of 1100 convicts it also brings to life some of the men and women who were transported here.'Emeritus Professor Brian Fletcher, University of Sydney

Judges comments: Though things have changed in recent years, for most of the time since Australia was founded it has been a source of embarrassment for many that the nation began as a convict settlement. For families with social pretensions, a convict ancestor was once a source of shame, though now it might be a status symbol. Among many interesting ideas in this densely researched account of Australia's long period as a convict colony, Babette Smith makes the point that one of the deepest motives in the campaign to abolish the transportation of convicts to Australia was homophobia: in the 19th century, it was felt that the convict colonies were "incubators of homosexuality". For that reason the truth about our past was covered up and mythologised for many years; in this book the myths and the facts are decisively disentangled.

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Winners and Shortlisted Authors 2002 - 2007

Award sponsored by Westfield during these Years
2007

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Winner: John Bailey Mr Stuart’s Track [Macmillan]

Sarah Benjamin A Castle in Tuscany [Pier 9/Murdoch]
Les Carlyon The Great War [Macmillian]
David Hill The Forgotten Children [Random House]
Barry Jones A Thinking Reed [Allen & Unwin]
Alice Pung Unpolished Gem [Black Inc]

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2006

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Winner: Gideon Haigh Asbestos House [Scribe Publications]

Malcolm Knox Secrets of the Jury Room [Random House]
Anne Manne Motherhood [Allen & Unwin]
Meg Stewart Margaret Olley: Far From a Still Life [Random House]
Gerald Stone 1932 [Pan Macmillan]
Brenda Walker The Wing of Night [Penguin/ Viking]

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2005

Winner: Helen Garner Joe Cinque’s Consolation [Picador/Pan Macmillan]

Robert Dessaix Twighlight of Love [Picador/Pan Macmillan]
Tim Flannery Country [Text Publishing]
Helen Garner Joe Cinque’s Consolation [Picador/Pan Macmillan]
Paul Ham Kokoda [HarperCollins]
Susan Johnson The Broken Book [Allen & Unwin]
Alasdair McGregor Frank Hurley [Penguin/Viking]

2004

Winner: Geoffrey Blainey Black Kettle and Full Moon [Penguin Group]

Inga Glendinnen Dancing with Strangers [Text Publishing]
Chester Porter Walking on Water: A Life in the Law [Random House]
James Woodford The Dog Fence [Text Publishing]
Geoffrey Blainey Black Kettle and Full Moon [Penguin Group]
Gabrielle Lord Lethal Factor [Hodder Headline]
Li Cunxin Mao’s Last Dancer [Penguin Group]

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2003

Winner: Barry Hill Broken Song [Knopf]

Michelle Arrow Upstaged [Currency Press]
Barry Hill Broken Song [Knopf]
David Metzenthen Boys of Blood and Bone [Penguin]
Gaby Naher The Truth About My Fathers [Random House]
Nicolas Rothwell Wings of the Kite-Hawk [Picador]
Margaret Simons Meeting of the Waters [Hodder]

2002

Winner: Tim Low The New Nature [Viking]

Geraldine Brooks Year of Wonders [Fourth Estate]
Gideon Haigh The Big Ship [Text Publishing]
Ian Hancock John Gorton-He Did it His Way [Hodder Headline]
Tim Low The New Nature [Viking]
Brenda Niall The Boyds [MU Press]
Shirley Walker Roundabout at Bangalow [UQ Press]

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