La Trobe author writes new history

The shortlist has been announced for the 2009 Prime Minister’s Literary awards, and Marilyn Lake, Professor in History at La Trobe University is amongst those nominated.

Transcript

Narration:

The shortlist has been announced for the 2009 Prime Minister’s Literary awards, and Marilyn Lake, Professor in History at La Trobe University is amongst those nominated.

Professor Marilyn Lake:

It’s a terrific honour to be nominated for this shortlist for the prime minister’s non-fiction award, and coming here today when you realise what great books are on the shortlist, and when the judges talked about there being two hundred altogether to read, you realise what a healthy state Australian writing is in, but also what talent is out there, so it’s a very great honour to be amongst such illustrious company, many of my friends and colleagues, but really terrific books.

Narration:

Professor Lake’s book, ‘Drawing the Global Colour Line’ was written with Professor Henry Reynolds of the University of Tasmania, and offers a new perspective on the history of human rights, and the role Australia has played in its development.

Philip Adams:

To be a judge on an award like this is like climbing Mount Everest without oxygen. In fact the pile of books was almost as high as Mount Everest, we had 170 to read, each of us, now that’s an awful lot of books. On the other hand once you get up to the top, the view from the summit is actually pretty good because a lot of the books were terrific.

Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds collaborated on a book, which puts the white Australia policy in a global context, the politics of race in the late 19th and 20th century. It’s a wonderful book, absolutely fantastic, and it very early on secured a safe place on the shortlist.

Narration:

The announcement took place at the State Library of Victoria, with The Honourable Peter Garrett attesting that Australian literature is in a healthy state.

Peter Garrett MP:

We’ve got a really vital literary culture in Australia, fantastic authors, and readership, which is pretty extensive and continues to grow. The prime minister’s literary awards for fiction and non-fiction is a way for us identifying and celebrating what is really one of our great creative endeavours – the literature tradition of the country.

It will mean a lot for authors to be nominated because it gives them a bit more publicity and that’s always a good thing, I think the publishers will appreciate it. Ultimately for the winners of each it’s a generous prize money, that means that got time to really spend devoting a bit more of the thinking, the creativity, the planning and the writing of work, so we hope that for the winners it gives them the opportunity to have a big space to produce the next great book.

Narration:

The winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary awards will be announced later this year.

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