AustLit
History
The David Unaipon Award was inaugurated in 1988 and is awarded for an outstanding manuscript by an unpublished Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander writer. This category is sponsored by the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) through the CAL Cultural Fund and supported by The University of Queensland Press.
The award was named in honour of David Unaipon, one of the earliest published Indigenous writers.
The award was not presented in 2019, because award judges felt none of the manuscripts were yet of publication standard: instead, eligible entrants were offered mentorships through the State Library of Queensland, in consultation with the Copyright Agency and The University of Queensland Press.
Notes
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Established by the Australian Bicentennial Authority's National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Program (NATSIP) in 1988, the David Unaipon award is in memory of the first Aboriginal writer to have a book published in Australia. David Unaipon (q.v.) (1873-1967), was born at Pt McLeay in the Tailem Bend area of the Murray River and spent most of his life in Adelaide, is best known for his book Native Legends, published in 1929.
The competition is open only to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors who have not been published and entries are accepted in any writing genre or Indigenous language. The winning entrant receives a guarantee of publication by University of Queensland Press and $15,000 prize money to be awarded by the Premier at the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards Presentation and subsequently celebrated in a ceremony held at the Brisbane Writers Festival.
In 2012 this award became part of the Queensland Literary Awards, Unpublished Indigenous Writer (after the cancellation of the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards).
Latest Winners / Recipients
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Year: 2023
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Year: 2022
winner y
Always Will Be : Stories of Goori Sovereignty from the Futures of the Tweed
St Lucia
:
University of Queensland Press
,
2024
27136924
2024
selected work
short story
science fiction
fantasy
'From the 2022 David Unaipon winner comes an outstanding and timely collection of speculative fiction imagining futures where Indigenous sovereignty is fully reasserted.
'In this stunningly inventive and thought-provoking collection, Mykaela Saunders poses the question—what might country, community and culture look like in the Tweed if Gooris reasserted their sovereignty?
'Each of the stories in Always Will Be is set in its own future version of the Tweed. In one, a group of girls plot their escape from a home they have no memory of entering. In another, two men make a final visit to the country they love as they contemplate a new life in a faraway place. Saunders imagines different scenarios for how the local Goori community might reassert sovereignty - reclaiming country, exerting full self-determination, or incorporating non-Indigenous people into the social fabric - while practising creative, ancestrally approved ways of living with changing climates.
'Epic in scope, and with a diverse cast of characters, Always Will Be is the ground-breaking winner of the 2022 David Unaipon Award. This is a forward-thinking collection that refuses cynicism and despair, and instead offers entertaining stories that celebrate Goori ways of being, knowing, doing - and becoming' (Publication summary)
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Year: 2021
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Year: 2020
winner y
How to Make a Basket
St Lucia
:
University of Queensland Press
,
2021
21861313
2021
selected work
poetry
'A powerful and lyrical collection of poetry by the winner of the 2020 David Unaipon Award.
'the end of the world was marked with beautiful light we should have known
'Simmering with protest and boundless love, Jazz Money's David Unaipon Award-winning collection, how to make a basket, examines the tensions of living in the Australian colony today. By turns scathing, funny and lyrical, Money uses her poetry as an extension of protest against the violence of the colonial state, and as a celebration of Blak and queer love. Deeply personal and fiercely political, these poems attempt to remember, revision and re-voice history.
'Writing in both Wiradjuri and English language, Money explores how places and bodies hold memories, and the ways our ancestors walk with us, speak through us and wait for us.' (Publication summary)
As 'The Space Between the Paperbark'. -
Year: 2018
Works About this Award
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David Unaipon Award Entries Open 2021 single work column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 10 March no. 746 2021; (p. 26) 'ENTRIES are now open for the David Unaipon Award —an award that has launched the careers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers such as Doris Pilkington Garimara. Tara June Winch, Ellen van Neerven, Larissa Behrendt and Samuel Wagan Watson. '
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Making Space for Torres Strait Islander Expression 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , March 2021;'Growing up on mainland Australia, I’ve struggled to find places where Torres Strait Islander stories are being told. I want to respectfully advocate for Torres Strait Islanders while acknowledging whose land I live on.'
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The Study of Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Literature in China 2015 single work
— Appears in: Oceanic Literary Studies , no. 2 2015; (p. 236-247) 'Australian Aboriginal literature, a unique genre in Australian Literature, has greatly contributed to its diversity and colorfulness. Its status has improved because of the awaking of Aboriginal people and constant emerging of Aboriginal writers. This paper emphatically probes into three stages, reviews the Australian Aboriginal literature studies in China and discusses some of the major characteristics. Remarkable achievements have been made in the past thirty years, but there still exist some problems, including inadequate sense of Aboriginality, lack of diachronic and holistic study of a writer's thoughts, inadequate research on the works of Aboriginal writers born after the 1960s.' (236-237) -
Unaipon Deadline Draws Near 2015 single work column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 3 June no. 602 2015; (p. 44) Includes portrait of Ellen van Neerven previous David Unaipon Award winner. -
New Faces for Black&write! 2015 single work column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 1 July no. 604 2015; (p. 66) 'Four Indigenous writers and editors have joined the State Library of Queensland's black&write! Indigenous Writing and Edition team...'
