SWW Members' Book Awards

Every second year, members are invited to submit books published over the previous two years. Separate awards are given for fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s books. Two Children’s Book Awards are given – one for a book for younger readers, and one for an adolescent/young adult book.

The next SWW Book Awards for Members of the Society of Women Writers NSW will be held in 2024, for books published between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2024.

2022

FICTION - judged by Margaret Wick

Winner - Kelly Van Nelson ♦ The Pinstripe Prisoner

Highly commended - Susan Steggall ♦ The Heritage You Leave Behind

Highly commended - Maureene Fries ♦ Stones. Bones and Hollyhocks

Commended - Helen Lyne ♦ Love, Disappointment and Other Joys of Life

Judge's Report - Margaret Wick

There were 15 books by 12 authors submitted in the Society’s Fiction category. All showed evidence of relevant and detailed research on a diversity of subjects. Stories crossed the globe, and the time settings ranged from the preChristian era to the present day. Many of them were able to transfer the minutiae of everyday life into life changing and life affirming stories that made for compelling reading.

I never cease to be amazed at what a writer can do with the basic story writing framework of a beginning, a middle and an end that pivot on theme, character and plot development.

Choosing a winner is never easy. I know it is a cliche to say of all entrants that they are winners, and in many ways this can be true. My “Reading Eye“ criteria considered these components:

consistent engagement of the reader
depth of character and plot development and their sustained development throughout the narrative
the writer’s stated intent/purpose is identified, and achieved in prose that does not ramble.

A real pleasure among the entries was the re-discovery of the Short Story, a format by its very nature that demands precision and economy of language. The four collections did not disappoint. The flaws and foibles of human nature were presented undisguised, and at times, celebrated. There was plenty of social commentary on a wide range of topics - youth, old age (and the process of getting there), sex, racism, murder, justice and retribution to name some.

It has been a pleasure sharing the creative talents of capable women writers.

NON-FICTION - judged by Sybil Jack

Winner - Christine Sykes ♦ Gough and Me

Highly commended - Valerie Clifford ♦ Fijian Shadows

Highly commended - Jan Conway ♦ Skimming the Surface – Expats in Kiribati

Commended - Kate Forsyth & Belinda Murrell ♦ Searching For Charlotte

Judge's Report - Sybil Jack

Non-fiction potentially covers a wide range of writing except for the study of the dance school Randells, which was a key rendezvous for mid c20th century teenagers. These twelve books are primarily addressed to that ‘art of the impossible’, biography or autobiography. All are interesting because they have distinctively different approaches to the genre, most avoiding the established conventional approach and studying the individual life story from a variety of unfamiliar angles not all of them psychological or chronological. They compare favourably with studies that have won the National Biography awards. They fit into recent professional critical debate about the role of the idea of public and private and the subject’s context and persona in biographical writing. For instance, Jessica North’s Mary Ann and Capt Piper raises issues of the nature or necessity of truth in biography when there is little historical material while Carmel Bendon attempts to make the ideas of medieval mystics relevant and creative to the 21st century by setting her medieval mystics in a modern social gathering. In one work which illustrates how many others were structured Kate Forsyth and Belinda Murrell demonstrate the steps that lie behind a biography’s composition. A work in verse on Olive Pink is uncommon in presentation although familiar in approach.

The autobiographies which are addressed to the ways in which personal identity is formed, revealed or endured by travel (Painters, Philosophers and Poets) or interaction with the living and the dead are varied. Half are focussed on the nature of the individual caught up in an unusual and difficult social situation such as Another Love, presenting a multiple marriage. The others relate to a more common cultural experience, particularly a medical academic story, Breaking through the Pain Barrier.

In selecting a winning title, I was guided by a mental list of innovative approaches likely to result in a novel presentation which would provide a previously unconsidered but persuasive interpretation. My winning title Gough and me employed a remarkable interrelationship of the public political and the private individual experience to produce an unexpected insight into how the culture of Australia was altered in the mid-twentieth century at several interlocking levels. Less unusual but distinctive, I would rate second and Highly Commended Fijian Shadows where the analytic method revealed the course of the hesitant growth of the political understanding of an outsider unexpectedly involved in the racial offensives underlying the 2000 Fijian coup. This is paralleled by my second Highly Commended Skimming the Surface where the ex-pat life is set against the complicated anthropology of different tribes in Kiribati still surviving from the days when Arthur Grimble was a colonial administrator of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. Finally I would commend Searching For Charlotte for its thorough explanations of historical process.

POETRY- judged by Carmel Bendon

Winner - Pip Griffin ♦ Virginia and Katherine, the Secret Diaries

Highly commended - Anne Casey ♦ the light we cannot see

Highly commended - Colleen Keating ♦ Olive Muriel Pink. Her radical and idealistic life. A poetic journey

Commended - Denise O’Hagan ♦ The Beating Heart

Judge's Report - Carmel Bendon

There were fifteen entries, many of which focused on contemporary issues: Covid, climate change, violence against women, nature, relationships. Biographical poems – both imagined and factually-based – also featured.

Poetry is that unique combination of form (cadence, rhythm, sound, visual shape on the page) and content (subject matter, images, emotions), enlivened by a poet’s creativity. It is the paring down of human experience to carefully chosen, evocative words, phrases, lines, to produce something that is new and yet profoundly familiar, and emotionally resonant. All entries found an intellectual response in me but not all resonated on an emotional level.

The shortlisted works exhibited this balance of form, content, creativity, and emotion. They were works that stayed with me, long after the books were closed.

Anne Casey’s Portrait of a Woman Walking Home is a journey through womanhood, a portrait of all women, in its astute and moving engagement with the experiences of every woman: love, death, grief, sexual abuse, new life, hope.

Anne Casey’s the light we cannot see is a wide-ranging reflection on the human condition and the state of our planet. Loss, Covid, separation from homeland, nature, birth, are intermingled with the vibrant shadow of what lies beyond life. In perfectly structured forms, Casey achieves a mystical evocation of that ‘light we cannot see’ but can sense in our hearts.

Antonette M Diorio’s Attachments takes the ordinary attachments of life and shines new light on them by means of vivid images, strong and authentic emotions, and poetic lines that are clear and true.

Virginia & Katherine. The Secret Diaries by Pip Griffin takes imagined diary entries of Virginia Woolfe and Katherine Mansfield to put the women in an intriguing ‘conversation’. Based on thorough research and Griffin’s own profound insights into these two great authors, this multi-layered and skilfully crafted work is vibrant, poignant and, at times, erotic in its content.

Colleen’s Keating’s Olive Muriel Pink: Her radical and idealistic life. A poetic journey transforms meticulous research into vivid images and crisp, engaging writing, to bring to light an extraordinary pioneering Australian woman’s life and achievements in this substantial biographical poem.

Denise O’Hagan’s The Beating Heart is a beautifully observed evocation of time, place, memory, exquisite and painful moments of a life, and of poetry itself. There is variety in the poems but all share rich imagery and perfectly structured lines that enable O’Hagan to touch the ‘beating heart’ in all of us.

CHILDREN & YOUNG ADULT - judged by Gail Erskine

2020

The Society's Members Book Awards ceremony was held on 10 February 2021, delayed because of COVID until we could all meet in person back in the Dixson Room at the State Library.
We congratulate everyone who entered, especially the Commended, Highly Commended and Winners, as listed below, and offer our sincere thanks to the judges for their hard work and heart-felt comments.

POETRY - judged by Margaret Bradstock

Winner: Colleen Keating ◊ Hildegard of Bingen

Highly Commended: Pip Griffin ◊ Margaret Caro
Highly Commended: Colleen Keating ◊ Desert Patterns
Commended: Tricia Dearborn ◊ Autobiochemistry

FICTION - judged by Carolyn Beaumont

Winner: Christine Sykes ◊ The Changing Room

Highly Commended: Diane Armstrong ◊  The Collaborator
Highly Commended: Carmel Bendon ◊  Grasping at Water
Commended: Cindy Broadbent ◊  The Revolutionary's Cousin

NON-FICTION - judged by Judith O'Connor

Winner: Colleen Keating ◊ Hildegard of Bingen

Highly Commended: Jo Oliver ◊  Jessie Traill - a Biography
Highly Commended: Annabet Ousback ◊  Red Herrings for Breakfast
Commended: Jessica North ◊  Esther

CHILDREN- judged by Paul McDonald

Winner: Libby Hathorn ◊ Miss Franklin

Highly Commended: Georgina Donaghey ◊ In the Shadow of an Elephant
Highly Commended: Susanne Gervay ◊ The Boy in the Blue Glasses

YOUNG ADULT - judged by Paul McDonald

No prizes awarded.

2018

NON-FICTION

Winner: Carolinda Witt ◊ Double Agent Celery: MI5's Crooked Hero

FICTION

Winner: Pippa Kay ◊ Keeping It In The Family
Highly Commended: Sue Woolfe ◊ Do You Love Me Or What?
Highly Commended: Melissa Bruce ◊ Picnic at Mount Disappointment
Commended: Carol Chandler ◊ Black Mountain

POETRY

Winner: Susan Fealy ◊ Flute of Milk
Highly Commended: Beverley George ◊ Only In Silence
Highly Commended: Colleen Keating ◊ Fire on Water
Commended: Kathryn Fry ◊ Green Point Bearings

YOUNG ADULTS

Winner: Helen Thurloe ◊ Promising Azra
Commended: Rosalind Sharbanee Meyer ◊ Angel Magic

CHILDREN - Hilarie Lindsay Children's Book Award

Winner: Pamela Rushby ◊ Lizzie and Margaret Rose
Highly Commended: Libby Hathorn ◊ Butterfly, We're Expecting You
Highly Commended: Michelle Worthington ◊ World's Worst Pirate
Commended: Pamela Rushby ◊ Princess Parsley

2016

NON-FICTION

First Prize: Rosalind Meyer ◊ Rosie's War
Second Prize: Susan P Ramage ◊ Kokoda Secret: Ian Hutchison, Australian Hero
Third Prize: Sue Castrique ◊ Under the Colony's Eye
Highly Commended: Ann Howard ◊ You'll be sorry. How World War II changed women's lives

FICTION

First Prize: Libby Sommer ◊ My Year With Sammy
Second Prize: Johanna Nicholls ◊ Golden Hope
Third Prize: Isolde Martyn ◊ The Golden Widows
Highly Commended: Johanna Nicholls ◊ The Lace Balcony

POETRY

First Prize: Cynthia Rowe ◊ Floating Nest
Second Prize: Karen Throssell ◊ Motherhood Statement
Equal Third Prize:
Marilyn Peck ◊ A Girl in the River
Colleen Keating ◊ A Call to Listen

YOUNG ADULTS

First Prize: Pamela Rushby ◊ The Ratcatcher’s Daughter
Second Prize: Pamela Rushby ◊ Flora’s War
Third Prize: Libby Hathorn ◊ Eventual Poppy Day

CHILDREN:

First Prize: Susanne Gervay ◊ Being Jack
Second Prize: Libby Hathorn ◊ Outside (illustrated by Ritva Voutila)
Third Prize: Libby Hathorn ◊ IncredibilIia (illustrated by Gaye Chapman)

2013

NON-FICTION

Equal First Prize:
Carol Baxter ◊ Captain Thunderbolt & His Lady
Dr Susan Steggall ◊ A Most Generous Scholar
Third Prize: Clio Calodoukas ◊ All Roads Lead to Shanghai
Highly Commended: Heather Bird ◊ I Hear You
Highly Commended: Colleen O’Sullivan ◊ Once A Day Dawn

JUNIOR FICTION

First Prize: Felicity Pulman ◊ A Ring Through Time
Second Prize: Susanne Gervay ◊ Ships In The Field
Third Prize: Libby Hathorn ◊ A Boy Like Me

POETRY

First Prize: Yve Louis ◊ A Door In The Forest
Second Prize: Dr Penelope Cottier ◊ The Cancellation of Clouds
Third Prize: Brenda Saunders ◊ Looking for Bullin Bullin

2011

NON-FICTION

First Prize: Lindsay Lewis & Sharyn Killens ◊ The Inconvenient Child
Second Prize: Dr Maria Hill ◊ Diggers & Greeks
Third Prize: Yvonne Louis ◊ A Brush with Mondrian)
Highly Commended: Pam Bayfield ◊ Come with Me
Highly Commended: Beverley Earnshaw ◊ Carss Park

FICTION

First Prize: Mary-Ellen Mullane ◊ Once on a Road
Highly Commended: P S (Penelope) Cottier ◊ A Quiet Day
Commended: Dr Patricia Gaut ◊ Sympathetic Vibrations

JUNIOR FICTION

First Prize: Susanne Gervay ◊ Always Jack
Second Prize: Cynthia Rowe ◊ Bad Grass
Third Prize: Libby Hathorn ◊ I Love You Book
Highly Commended: Wendy Blaxland ◊ I Can Cook – series

POETRY

First Prize: Winifred Weir ◊ Walking on Ashes
Highly Commended: Carolyn Gerrish ◊ The View from the Moon
Commended: Libby Hathorn ◊ Vietnam Reflections

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