ABR Reviewing Competition

Black Saturday

The devastating Victorian bushfires of early February seem to have changed the state forever. The death toll, still not confirmed as we go to print, is incredible. The natural environment, always fragile in this state, has never seemed so vulnerable. It will take decades to recover.

Our condolences go to all the victims of the fires. Few Victorians were unaffected, directly or indirectly. Last month, in his ABR review of Tim Birkhead’s The Wisdom of Birds, Peter Menkhorst cited the internationally renowned La Trobe University ornithologist Richard Zann. Dr Zann, along with his wife and daughter, died in the Kinglake fire.

ABR wishes to donate books and magazines to affected communities and their public libraries. This is difficult at present. Two thousand houses and libraries – private or institutional – have been destroyed. The Australian Society of Authors, the Australian Booksellers’ Association and the Australian Publishers’ Association (of which ABR is a member) have joined forces to restock libraries and schools in devastated areas.

In the meantime, if you know of any individuals who have lost their libraries, please contact the Editor, who will endeavour to arrange a suitable donation.

In a country famously saturated with prizes, the ABR Reviewing Competition is unique. It is widely regarded as one of the most constructive and needed awards, which is why we have brought forward the third competition from the advertised date of 2006. Announcing the winners of last year’s competition in the December 2004–January 2005 issue, ‘Advances’ reported that 100 new and experienced reviewers had entered, in three categories: fiction, non-fiction (including poetry) and children’s/young adult books. Our winners were Maya Linden, Vivienne Kelly and Stephanie Owen Reeder, respectively, all of whom (in addition to having their winning review published in the February 2005 issue of ABR) have gone on to write for the Review (Dr Reeder, indeed, has just become an editorial adviser). ABR looks forward to a similarly rich crop this year.

And the winners are ...

The judges of the 2004 ABR Reviewing Competition were gratified by the level of interest in this competition and by the overall standard of entries. We received almost 100 entries (a third of them from subscribers). Fiction and non-fiction were evenly divided; there were rather fewer children’s/young adult book reviews. To no one’s surprise, the most popular book was Helen Gamer’s Joe Cinque’s Consolation: A True Story of Death, Grief and the Law, followed by Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire and Peter Goldsworthy’s Three Dog Night. In the non-fiction category, the field was eclectic, from poetry to memoir to academic monograph. The judge had to hand it to Alan Whitehead of Blackheath NSW, who chose to review the 2005 Sydney and Blue Mountains Street Directory. Next time we look forward to his critique of the telephone directory.