ABIA Winners Announced
The winners of the 2012 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) were announced in Sydney on 18 May. The overall Book of the Year, together with the Literary Fiction Book of the Year, was awarded to Anna Funder for All That I Am. The General Fiction Book of the Year prize went to Kate Grenville for Sarah Thornhill and Newcomer of the Year is Favel Parrett for Past the Shallows.
William McInnes and the late Sarah Watt won the General Nonfiction Book category for Worse Things Happen at Sea, and the late Hazel Rowley was the winner of the Biography of the Year for Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage.
Awards for children’s books went to Emma Quay for Rudie Nudie (Book of the Year for Younger Children) and Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton for The 13 Storey Treehouse (Book of the Year for Older Children).
Allen & Unwin was named Publisher of the Year for the third year in a row while Text Publishing took out its first award in the Small Publisher of the Year category. Emphasising the losses to Australia’s literary community in the past twelve months, Text publisher Michael Heyward dedicated his company’s win to the late Diana Gribble.
Further information on the ABIA awards is available on the Australian Publishers Association website.