Entries are now open for the 2022 Walkley Book Award
The Walkley Book Award celebrates the value and importance of long-form journalism, acknowledging the proud line-up of Australian writers who have taken subjects of enduring topicality and consequence from news bulletins, eye-witness reporting, investigations and historical records and provided readers with expanded factual detail, revelation and greater clarity of analysis in book form.
The 2022 Walkley Book Award acknowledges the work produced by an Australian journalist or writer, published in the year from September 1, 2021 to August 31, 2022.
Entries can encompass subject matter including true crime and biographies through to political analysis, business writing, war reporting, investigative journalism and foreign correspondence.
Judging
Judging is a two-tier process comprising senior representatives from within the media and publishing community. Judges will determine a long list and shortlist of nominees prior to the announcement of winners at the 67th Walkley Awards.
Entries must include:
- Completed online form, including synopsis and supporting statement
- Six (6) x hard copies of the book once the online form is complete
- Payment of $260 if a non-member of MEAA
- Entry form/s signed by the author and publisher
Books should be sent to: The Walkley Book Award, First Floor, 245 Chalmers Street, Redfern, NSW 2016
For information on the Walkley Book Award please contact Kym Middleton on +61 401 512 583 | kym.middleton@walkleys.com
Congratulations to Kate Holden, winner of the 2021 Walkley Book Award
The Winter Road
Black Inc.
This book explores the 2014 killing of environmental officer Glen Turner by 80-year-old farmer Ian Turnbull outside Croppa Creek, New South Wales, and the legacy of land management since colonial settlement that led to the tragedy.
Kate Holden spent four years on The Winter Road, piecing together the crime from media fragments, archives, court documents and interviews. The book amalgamates journalism, historical research, crime and political reportage, all while honouring the tragedy at its heart.
Kate Holden is the author of In My Skin: A memoir (Text, 2005) and The Romantic: Italian Nights and Days (Text, 2010). Holden wrote a popular column for The Age for several years and has published essays, short stories and literary criticism in various journals and anthologies, appearing recently with portraits and features in The Saturday Paper. She lives in the Illawarra.
Judges’ comments
Kate Holden’s exposition of an environmental officer’s murder on a lonely road is part thriller and part meditation on Australia’s landscape, culture and politics as legacies of its settler past. Drawing together true crime, history and botany at the place where journalism and literature meet, this is an extraordinary work of storytelling.
Past winners
The 2021 winner joins the ranks of some of the most celebrated non-fiction writers in Australia: Lucie Morris-Marr (Fallen), Leigh Sales (Any Ordinary Day), Helen Pitt (The House), Louise Milligan (Cardinal), Stan Grant (Talking To My Country), Chip Le Grand (The Straight Dope), Paul Kelly (Triumph and Demise), Pamela Williams (Killing Fairfax), George Megalogenis (The Australian Moment), Russell Skelton(King Brown Country), Shirley Shackleton (The Circle of Silence), Graham Freudenberg(Churchill and Australia), Don Watson (American Journeys), Chris Masters (Jonestown), Neil Chenoweth (Packer’s Lunch) and Bob Connolly (Making Black Harvest). Entries can encompass subject matter including true crime and biographies, political analysis, business writing, war reporting, investigative journalism and foreign correspondence.
Judging
Judging is a two-tier process comprising senior representatives from the media and publishing community. Judges will determine a long list and shortlist of nominees before winners are announced at the 67th Walkley Awards in November 2022.