Wiradjuri writer Tara June Winch has won three of the main. awards at the 2020 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards for her novel ‘The Yield’, taking home three big prizes, including the Book of the Year.
Awarding Winch’s novel the top gong (worth $10,000) and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($40,000), the judges described it as “a ground-breaking and wholly original work of fiction by one of our most exciting contemporary writers.
“Winch plays with form, shape, style, perspective and point of view in order to conjure three very distinct voices that speak to the past, present and future of our nation: Albert Gondiwindi, his granddaughter August and the nineteenth-century missionary Reverend Greenleaf.”
As ‘The Yield’ opens, Poppy Albert has died. His granddaughter August, who lives on the other side of the world, hurries back home to her past, to Massacre Plains and to her Nana, Elsie.
Their family histories, stories, violent colonial experiences and all the accompanying contests over land — which continue, thanks to a mining company — are intertwined in the novel.
The novel includes a dictionary of Wiradjuri language, compiled by the character of Albert Gondiwindi — and, through her story, Winch makes a case for all of us to learn the word for country in the old language, wherever in Australia we are.
As Poppy Albert tells it: “I was born on Ngurambang — can you hear it? — Ngu-ram-bang. If you say it right it hits the back of your mouth and you should taste blood in your words.”
In her speech accepting the award Winch said, “I hope this book will spur the department of education into implementing our first languages into our core curriculum.”
The List of 2020 winners:
Book of the Year ($10,000)
The Yield by Tara June Winch (Penguin Random House)
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($40,000)
The Yield by Tara June Winch
UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing ($5,000)
Real Differences by SL Lim (Transit Lounge)
Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction ($40,000)
Tiberius with a Telephone: The Life and Stories of William McMahon by Patrick Mullins (Scribe Publications)
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($30,000)
Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness by Peter Boyle (Vagabond Press)
Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature ($30,000) — joint winners
Ella and the Ocean by Lian Tanner and Jonathan Bentley (Allen & Unwin)
Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature ($30,000)
Lenny’s Book of Everything by Karen Foxlee (Allen & Unwin)
Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting ($30,000)
Counting and Cracking by S. Shakthidharan, Associate writer Eamon Flack (Belvoir and Co-Curious)
Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting ($30,000) — joint winners
Missing by Kylie Boltin (SBS)
The Cry, Episode 2 by Jacquelin Perske (Synchronicity Films)
Multicultural NSW Award ($20,000)
The Pillars by Peter Polites (Hachette Australia)
Indigenous Writers’ Prize ($30,000) — biennial award
The White Girl by Tony Birch (University of Queensland Press)
People’s Choice Award
The Yield by Tara June Winch
Original article transcribed from Kate Evans’s piece for Radio National’s ‘The Bookshelf’.