Bernard Collaery’s exposé of the Australian Government’s exploitation of East Timor, a history of censorship in Australia, essays about travel and writing, and volumes of poetry are among the six books shortlisted for the 2021 ACT Book of the Year, which recognises quality contemporary literary works by ACT-based authors.

Twenty-one eligible books were nominated for the 2021 award. They represent a diverse range of genres, including fiction, non-fiction, history, biography, short stories, children’s books, and poetry.

2021 ACT Book of the Year Shortlist:

• Oil Under Troubled Water: Australia’s Timor Sea Intrigue, by Bernard Collaery (Melbourne University Press, 2020)

Bernard Collaery, a former Attorney-General of the ACT and long-term legal counsel to the government of East Timor, was charged in 2018, with Witness K, for allegedly breaching the Intelligence Services Act.  

In this book, he provides the whole sordid backstory to Australian politics’ ‘biggest scandal’: ASIS bugging the East Timorese government during negotiations over Timor Sea oil; and how both major political parties have enriched Australia and its corporate allies at the expense of its tiny neighbour and wartime ally, one of the poorest nations in the world.

• Utterly, by Dr PS Cottier (Ginninderra Press, 2020)

Dr Cottier is the Poetry Editor at the Canberra Times. A poet who lives in Canberra, she has a particular interest in speculative poetry. She has been written six volumes of poetry, and been published widely both in Australia and in Canada, England, New Zealand, and the USA.

Her poetry has been praised as “devastatingly truthful, terrifying, and funny” (Judith Nangala Crispin) and as “of pronounced verbal wit and notable candour” (Canberra Times).

• Spinoza’s Overcoat: Travels with Writers and Poets, by Subhash Jaireth (Transit Lounge, 2020)

Born in India, Jaireth has published poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in Hindi, Russian, and English. He is the author of the novel After Love (2012) and the short-story collection Moments (2014). 

Spinoza’s Overcoat is a collection of essays on the writers, and their writing, that have enriched his own life. The works of Franz Kafka, Marina Tsvetaeva, Mikhail Bulgakov, Paul Celan, Hiromi Ito, Baruch Spinoza, and others ignite in him the urge to travel (both physically and in spirit), almost like a pilgrim, to the places where such writers were born or died or wrote. Drawing on years of research, translation, and travel, Spinoza’s Overcoat illuminates loss, mortality, and the reverie of writing.

• Nigh, by Dr Penelope Layland (Recent Work Press, 2020)

Dr Layland is an award-winning poet and a former journalist, speechwriter, and communications professional. Her 2018 collection Things I’ve thought to tell you since I saw you last was shortlisted for both the 2019 Kenneth Slessor Prize and the 2019 ACT Book of the Year, and won the ACT Publishing and Writing Award for poetry in 2019.

Nigh won the ACT Notable Book Awards for Poetry in 2020. It is a collection of poems steeped in a sense of dark foreboding. Jumping from the global to the everyday, many of the poems chime with the mood that all is not right with the world. Even in the seemingly mundane, or overtly beautiful, she unpicks uncomfortable truths.

• The Trials of Portnoy: How Penguin brought down Australia’s censorship system, by Dr Patrick Mullins (Scribe, 2020)

The Trials of Portnoy is the first full account of an audacious publishing decision that – with the help of booksellers and readers – ended literary censorship in Australia. In 1970, Penguin Books Australia published Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth’s bestseller about a boy hung up about his mother and his penis. In doing so, Penguin confronted the censorship authorities, which culminated in criminal charges, police raids, and court trials across the country. Sweeping from the cabinet room to the courtroom, The Trials of Portnoy draws on archival records and new interviews to show how Penguin and a band of writers, booksellers, academics, and lawyers determinedly sought for Australians the freedom to read what they wished.

Dr Mullins is a Canberra-based writer and academic. The book was short-listed for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, 2021, and long-listed for the Mark and Evette Moran ‘Nib’ Literary Award, 2020. His first book, Tiberius with a Telephone, a biography of former prime minister William McMahon, won the 2020 NSW Premier’s Non-Fiction Award and the 2020 National Biography Award.

• Doggerland, by Moya Pacey (Recent Work Press, 2020)

Doggerland is a once fertile and populated landmass, now submerged under the North Sea, that once connected the British Isles with Europe. In the winter of 2017/18, Doggerland was clearly visible once again from the coast near the town where Moya Pacey was born and raised. In Pacey’s hands, this phenomenon works as a metaphor for how memory brings to the surface images, glimpses, stories, people, and places appearing and disappearing, in no set order. Doggerland revisits post-World War II northern England, replete with traditional norms and values, and darknesses waiting to emerge above the water of everyday life.

Pacey is a founding editor of the women’s online poetry journal Not Very Quiet, for which she and Sandra Renew were awarded a Canberra Critics’ Circle Award. Her previous poetry collections Black Tulips and The Wardrobe were shortlisted for the ACT Writers’ Centre Poetry Award.

Tara Cheyne, Minister for the Arts, congratulated the shortlisted authors.

“Again, the standard has been high this year, and it’s wonderful to see a such a diverse list – reflecting the strength of our local craft.

“These distinguished authors have made a significant contribution to arts and culture here in the ACT, and the ACT Government is proud to recognise their work through this award. I want to thank and encourage all local authors, emerging and established, to continue their valuable work in writing and storytelling.”

The winner of the 2021 ACT Book of the Year will be announced on 29 September.

Nominations for the 2022 ACT Book of the Year open today. Go to the artsACT website for more information.

Canberra Daily is keen to hear from you about a story idea in the Canberra and surrounding region. Click here to submit a news tip.