The Northern Territory Literary Awards are offered annually and are administered by the Northern Territory Library. The award gives prizes for poetry, essay, short story and youth literarture. In 2008 the Charles Darwin University Bookshop joined as a new sponsor and is offering a travel short story award. Existing sponsors are Dymocks Booksellers, Charles Darwin University and the Kath Manzie Estate. Please support them in return.
As the prizes are given for mostly locally produced work they are not widely distributed, although this years winner, Ochre and Dust, can be easily tracked down as it has also won the inaugural Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-fiction. That said, the Northern Territory Library makes available the winning short stories, essays and poems in a free download. PDF form each year. They are well worth a read so please check them out as some of the work is stunning. Not sure when this years winners will be available. KJP
The application states that “the judges will be looking for a script that is vividly imagined, expertly crafted and lends itself naturally to a performance medium. The winning script will then be workshopped for a live performance at the 2010 Darwin Festival”.
Another new award is the, the Birch Carol and Coyle Screenwriting Award, awarded for a screenplay for a feature or short film or television program, “executed with technical excellence and creativity”.
The Awards will now also be held as part of the NT Writers Centre’s “Wordstorm” festival in May, becoming the opening welcome event.
The Awards, which have been running since 1984, help to recognise the Territory’s finest wordsmiths, acknowledging and celebrating the talent that our creative residents have to offer, and help to cultivate our ever-growing creative writing industry.
Entries for the 2010 NT Literary Awards close on January 31. Entry forms can be found at www.ntl.nt.gov.au.
2009 Northern Territory Literary Awards Winners
Charles Darwin University Bookshop Travel Short Story Award
Barbara Eather - Castronomy
Charles Darwin University Essay AwardRoland Dyrting – The Poinciana Woman of East Point
Dymocks Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers’ Award
Ellen Maria Pocock – Time Marches On
Dymocks Arafura Short Story Award
Karen Manton – Hannah’s Bread
Dymocks Red Earth Poetry Award
Dani Powell – Sketch of This DayKath Manzie Youth Literary Award
Shona Welsh – Oubliette2009 Northern Territory Literary Awards Finalists
Charles Darwin University Bookshop Travel Short Story Award
Mary Allmich – Against the Odds
Claire Marron – Journey to the Mountain: The story of Llullaillaco Boy
Rohan Wightman – Tigers and Goats
Charles Darwin University Essay AwardMary Anne Butler – …Drowning…
Kieran Finnane – Firework
Leni Shilton – Larapinta Trail: Notes from a Journal
Dymocks Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers’ Award
Joy Cardona – The Buffalo Shooter
Dymocks Arafura Short Story Award
Michael Giacometti – Encounter at Kalaykapi, circa 1880
Glenn Morrison – The Mad Woman
Natalie Sprite – This is What Love Sounds Like
Dymocks Red Earth Poetry Award
Kaye Aldenhoven – Cows, Stuart Highway
Kelly-Lee Hickey – Sustenance
Kelly-Lee Hickey – Reflux
Fred Vant Sand – Thirty Years
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award
Rosie O’Reilly – In Fertile Wet
Oceana Pastor-Eisgood – Taj and the Creature
The joint winners of the 2009 Chief Minister’s Northern Territory History Book Awards are:
Yalangbara: art of the Djang’kawu by Banduk Marika and the Rirratjingu clan, and edited by Margie West, published by CDU Press and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.
This is the first Indigenous art publication to focus upon one significant ancestral site Yalangbara (Port Bradshaw)
and
Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists by Vivien Johnson
This book celebrates 50,000 years of culture, covering half a million square kilometres of country, across five deserts.
2008 Northern Territory Literary Awards Winners: Territory historian takes out top literary prize
A TERRITORY historian has taken out the NT's top literary prize, just weeks after winning the inaugural Prime Minister's Literary Award.
October 6th- Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers, by Philip Jones has won the 2008 Chief Minister's NT History Book Award
The book, which traces the stories of Aboriginal artefacts when taken from their museum shelves, was also named as the Prime Minister's Literary Award non-fiction winner on September 12.
As well as the History Award, prizes are given across six other categories.
Other winners were: David Curtis with What a Fright for the Dymocks Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers Award, Ali Cobby Eckermann with Intervention Pay Day for the Dymocks Red Earth Poetry Award, Jennifer Mills with Plain Indians for the Dymocks Arafura Short Story Award, Anne Fitzpatrick with South-Asia by Crutch for the Charles Darwin University Bookshop Travel Short Story Award, Dael Allison with Psyche and the Crocodile for the Charles Darwin University Essay Award, and Rosanna Cameron with Caught for the Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award.
About Ochre and Rust
Ochre and Rust takes Aboriginal artefacts from their museum shelves and traces their stories, revealing charged and nuanced moments of encounter in Australia’s frontier history. Philip Jones positions them at the centre of these gripping, poignant tales, transporting the reader into the heart of Australia's frontier zone.
Ochre and Rust builds incrementally, resulting in a convincing new insight into our frontier past and the motives of its characters. (Wakefield Press).
The author
Philip Jones is an historian interested in the Australian frontier and in the artistic and cultural activity engendered by it. Before writing his doctorate on the history of ethnographic collecting, he completed a law degree and majored in French history at the University of Adelaide. Appointed curator in the Anthropology Department at the South Australian Museum in 1984, he was a contributor to Peter Sutton’s seminal Dreamings: the Art of Aboriginal Australia (1988). Philip has curated a number of ethnographic and historical exhibitions, and designed the concept for the South Australian Museum’s Aboriginal Cultures Gallery.
Since 1985 he has undertaken fieldwork with Aboriginal communities in southern and central Australia. He is currently involved in a site-recording project with Aboriginal people of the Birdsville region. The contemplative and reflective strain in Ochre and Rust reflect
Other 2008 Northern Territory Award Winners
Dymocks Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers’ Award 2008
David Curtis
Title of work: What a Fright
Dymocks Red Earth Poetry Award 2008
Ali Cobby Eckermann
Title of work: Intervention Pay Day
Dymocks Arafura Short Story Award 2008
Jennifer Mills
Title of work: Plain Indians
Charles Darwin University Essay Award 2008
Dael Allison
Title of work: Psyche and the Crocodile
Charlie Ward
Title of work: Bogged Policies and Barefoot Mayors (Highly Commended)
Charles Darwin University BookShop Travel Short Story Award 2008
Anne Fitzpatrick
Title of work: South-Asia by Crutch
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award 2008
Rosanna Cameron
Title of work: Caught
2008 Northern Territory Literary Awards Finalists
Dymocks Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers’ Award finalists 2008
Keisha Palmer
Title of work: A recipe for now
Veronica Pierik
Title of work: In whose best interest
David Curtis
Title of work: What a Fright
Dymocks Red Earth Poetry Award finalists 2008
Dael Allison
Title of work: Defining scarlet
Ali Cobby Eckermann
Title of work: Faiku
Ali Cobby Eckermann
Title of work: Intervention Pay Day
Michael Giacometti
Title of work: The Shooting Gallery
Michael Watts
Title of work: Unlikely Honeymoon
Helen Pavlin
Title of work: Who's Turning the Kaleidoscope?
Dymocks Arafura Short Story Award finalists 2008
Leni Shilton
Title of work: Josh's Story
Rebecca Nelson
Title of work: Min Min
Bruce Hocking
Title of work: Nell
Jennifer Mills
Title of work: Plain Indians
David Jagger
Title of work: Privacy
Charles Darwin University Essay Award finalists 2008
Jane Clancy
Title of work: The Belles of Saint Mary's: Memories of Growing up Catholic in Darwin during the Sixities.
Helen Smyth
Title of work: Bird Watching
Charlie Ward
Title of work: Bogged Policies and Barefoot Mayors
Rohan Wightman
Title of work: Darwin Dreaming
Margaret Gargan
Title of work: Finding Lorna
Dael Allison
Title of work: Psyche and the Crocodile
Charles Darwin University BookShop Travel Short Story Award finalists 2008
Barbara Eather
Title of work: It's Tea Towels for Me
Robbie Wesley
Title of work: Java Magic
Kim Aikman
Title of Work: Outside
Barbara Eather
Title of work: The Way of the Pundit
Anne Fitzpatrick
Title of work: South-Asia by Crutch
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award finalists 2008
Abbey R. Bradhurst
Title of work: Black Friday
Rosanna Cameron
Title of work: Caught
2007 Northern Territory Literary Awards
Link to '2007 'Northern Territory Literary Awards; short stories, essays and poems'
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award($600 prize)
Oceana Pastor-Elsegood for 'Yellow-dress girl'
Charles Darwin University Essay Award ($1000)
Nigel Turvey for 'On natural selection and the characteristic qualities of the greater number of sailors'
Dymocks Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers’ Award ($1000)
Ellen Pocock for 'A question of identity'
Dymocks Arafura Short Story Award
Bruce Hocking for 'Shrink'
Dymocks Red Earth Poetry Award ($1000)
Bill Coburn for 'Kadaitcha'
2007 Northern Territory Literary Awards Finalists
Dymocks Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers’ Award finalists 2007
Jack Manguji
Title of work: Free me country
Ellen Maria Pocock (Nabajin)
Title of work: A question of identity - Winner
Dymocks Red Earth Poetry Award finalists 2007
Bill Coburn
Title of work: Kadaitcha - Winner
Ali Cobby Eckermann
Title of work: One child two child wailing & wild
Jill Pettigrew
Title of work: Black cockatoos
Samantha Sabaratnam
Title of work: Metaphor on a face
Meg Mooney
Title of work: My father
Katy Harrison
Title of work: Thylacine Thylacine Thylacine
Dymocks Arafura Short Story Award finalists 2007
Carmel Williams
Title of work: The rent
Patrick Nelson
Title of work: The jelly beans’ picnic
Marion Townsend
Title of work: Footsteps
Janet Sparrow
Title of work: Wharf
Megan Jacobson
Title of work: Sunwords
Bruce Hocking
Title of work: Shrink Winner
Charles Darwin University Essay Award finalists 2007
Nigel Turvey
Title of work: On natural selection and the characteristic qualities of the greater number of sailors
Heidi Becker
Title of work: A view of Statehood for the Northern Territory Government and its People
Leanne Taylor
Title of work: The Singaporisation of Darwin
Linda Wirf
Title of work: Cultural landscape of Mindal-ang-gwa (Mindal Beach)
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award finalists 2007
Oceana Setaysha
Title of work: Yellow-dress girl
Kate Farrell
Title of work: Honey ant dreaming
Links to past award winner details and essays etc
2006 Northern Territories Literary Awards
2005 Northern Territory Literary Awards
2003 Northern Territory Literary Awards
Chief Minister's History Book Award (entry conditions and official site etc here)
note:the only titles available from our suppliers are denoted by the blue links below. Please try the publishers direct or perhaps the Charles Darwin University Bookshop or Darwin Dymocks.
Award Winner and finalists 2007
Winner: Dr Pam Oliver (right)
Empty North - The Japanese Presence and Australians Reactions 1860s to 1942 published by Charles Darwin University Press
Shortlist: Liam Campbell Darby: One Hundred Years of Life in a Changing Culture
Shortlist: Glenice Yee - Through Chinese Eyes
2006
Winner
Tony Roberts, Frontier Justice: A History of the Gulf Country To 1900
University Of Queensland Press, 2005
Shortlist: Marge Duminski, Southport Northern Territory 1869-2002
available from Historical Society of the Northern Territory, 2005
Shortlist: Claire Henty-Gebert, Paint Me Black Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005
Shortlist: Pearl Ogden, People of the Victoria River Region: An Album, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005
2005
Winner: John Mulvaney Paddy Cahill of Oenpelli
Shortlist: Kathy De La Rue The Evolution of Darwin: 1869 – 1911
Shortlist: Peter Monteath The Diary of Emily Caroline Creaghe: explorer
2004
Winner: David Bridgman, Acclimatisation: Architecture at the Top End of Australia
Shortlist: Geraldine Byrne, Tom and Jack: A Frontier Story
Ivan Jordan
Shortlist: Their way: Towards an Indigenous Warlpiri Christianity
Shortlist: Brian Reid, The Menzies School of Health Research: Establishment, 1978-1997
