Winning women
Women shone at the 2018 Australian Book Industry Awards, proudly sponsored by The Weekly.
After a year in which forces that have clipped the wings of women have dominated headlines, the writers and publishers of Australia rose up and showed the strength of the female voice. The industry has honoured the stories that captured the hearts of readers this year, such as Sarah Schmidt’s See What I
Have Done and The Trauma Cleaner: One Women’s Extraordinary Life in Death, Decay and Disaster, by
Sarah Krasnostein. The
Weekly’s own country cook, Maggie Beer, and Professor
Ralph Martins, were awarded the prize for Illustrated Book of the Year for Maggie’s Recipe for Life.
But the biggest winner of the night was debut author Jessica Townsend, whose sprawling fantasy Nevermoor: The Trials of
Morrigan Crow has earned her comparisons with J. K. Rowling. Jessica ascended the ABIA stage three times to collect statuettes including the overall prize, Book of the Year. Her novel is already a global hit, with 20th Century Fox optioning the film rights. Backstage, a thrilled Jessica put the book’s success down to the fact that she had fun writing it. “I wrote the thing that I loved.”
The Weekly’s Editor-atLarge and Books Editor, Juliet Rieden, presented Michael Robotham with the award for General Fiction Book of the Year for The Secrets She Keeps.
Rock icon Jimmy Barnes picked up an award for Working Class Man. “The act of sitting down and writing has started a healing process in me that has been long overdue,” Barnes said.