Significant stories: Entering the State Significance award

The top prize in the Queensland Literary Awards is worth twenty-five thousand big ones (pineapples). The Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance is hotly contested each year. But what makes a contender? What are the judges looking for? And who has won in the past?

With nominations for the Queensland Literary Awards closing on Friday 14 April, take a quick look below to see if your book (or your best friend’s book!) might be eligible.

In the past few years, authors of a range of novels, short story collections, poetry collections and non-fiction books have made the shortlist for the Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance. The prize is awarded to an outstanding work by an Australian writer, focused on documenting, discussing or highlighting a uniquely Queensland story, or an outstanding work by a Queensland author if it has increased the awareness and profile of Queensland writing.

Fiction

For decades, Melissa Lucashenko has been one of our most prominent authors, and she took out the State Significance award in 2019. Lucashenko’s searing and deeply funny novel Too Much Lip begins with the main character, Kerry Salter, racing out of Queensland on her Harley Davidson, headed for northern New South Wales.

Queensland author Mirandi Riwoe’s stunning historical fiction novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain is about north Queensland during the often-brutal gold rushes of the 1870s. Riwoe tells us she “was interested in exploring the lives of Chinese people during the Australian gold rush. We have always heard of ‘the Chinese’ coming here as a horde, but rarely, in fiction, do we read about the individuals”. Stone Sky Gold Mountain was named a finalist in the State Significance award in 2020.

Beloved Brisbane locals Krissy Kneen and Trent Dalton have also made their way onto the finalist podium. Kneen was shortlisted for Wintering, a mysterious, sensuous tale set in Tasmania, and Dalton for everybody’s favourite novel about Darra/Dutton Park/Bracken Ridge/The Gap with Boy Swallows Universe.

Non-Fiction

Strong non-fiction winners of the past few years include Biting the Clouds by Fiona Foley, Heartland: How Rugby League Explains Queensland by Joe Gorman, and We’ll Show the World: Expo 88 by Brisbane historian Jackie Ryan (also the only book on this list to include a copy of the author’s Expo 88 photo ID).

Poetry, short story and memoir

Two poets with connections to Queensland have also been shortlisted for the State Significance award: Jake Goetz for meditations with passing water and Jaya Savige for Change Machine, which the judges called “eloquent … playful and technically robust”. In 2021, Brisbane-based writer Laura Elvery’s short story collection Ordinary Matter was a finalist.

In 2021, Lech Blaine was shortlisted for his memoir, Car Crash, which the judges called a “perceptive and intelligent investigation of the buccaneer masculine culture that dominates young Australian men”. And in 2020, Jessica White’s beautiful Hearing Maud was shortlisted – White’s work of creative non-fiction is part memoir, and part exploration of the nineteenth century Deaf Queenslander novelist Rosa Praed.

Entries close 14 April! With its top prize of $25,000, who do you think will win?

This blog post was originally published in April 2022. It was edited on 24 March 2023.