Michael AdamsMichael Adams is the winner of the eleventh Calibre Essay Prize. The judges – award-winning author and historian Sheila Fitzpatrick, ABR Editor Peter Rose, and Picador Publisher Geordie Williamson – chose Michael Adams’s essay ‘Salt Blood’ from a field of almost 200 essays submitted from fourteen countries. Michael Adams receives $5,000, and his essay appears in the June–July issue of Australian Book Review.

‘Salt Blood’ is a remarkable and highly original meditation on freediving and mortality. On learning that he had won the Calibre Essay Prize, Michael Adams commented: ‘Winning the Calibre Essay Prize is an incredible honour, and a total surprise. I have followed ABR and Calibre for many years, and drawn much inspiration and insight from previous winners. I hope my essay highlights some hard issues: I take Rebecca Solnit’s position that we write the stories that we can’t tell anyone.’

Darius Sepehri (photograph by Elena Carletti)This year ABR has added a second prize, worth $2,500. The winner is Darius Sepehri, a researcher and PhD student at the University of Sydney. His essay – entitled ‘To Speak of Sorrow’ (to be published in the August issue) – is about the many kinds of grief and their different expressions in writing and culture, as lament, testimony, or ritual.

The judges have commended two other essays: ‘Change, We, Art’ by Meng Jin (USA/UK), and ‘Making Things’ by Sara Dowse’ (Australia), which will be published in coming issues.

Michael Adams’s winning essay is published in the June–July 2017 issue of ABR.

Click here to download the media release to learn more about Michael Adams and the Calibre Essay Prize

Subscribe to ABR Online to gain access to this issue online, plus the ABR archive (containing all Calibre Prize essays published from 2011).

Click here for more information about past winners.

Click here for more information about the judges.

We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Mr Colin Golvan QC.

Announcing the 2016 Jolley Prize winner

Australian Book Review is delighted to announce that Josephine Rowe has won the 2016 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize for her story 'Glisk'. Ian Dickson announced Josephine as the overall winner at the 2016 Melbourne Writers Festival. Anthony Lawrence placed second for his story 'Ash' and Jonathan Tel came third for his story 'The Water Calligrapher's Women'. Subscribers can read all three shortlisted stories in the August 2016 Fiction issue. We would like to congratulate all three shortlisted entrants and thank all those who entered their stories

Josephine Rowe reads from her winning story 'Glisk' at the 2016 Jolley Prize ceremony at the Melbourne Writers Festival

The ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize is one of the country’s most prestigious awards for short fiction. This year the Jolley Prize attracted almost 1400 entries from thirty-eight different countries. The 2016 Jolley Prize was judged by ABR Deputy Editor Amy Baillieu, and authors Maxine Beneba Clarke and David Whish-Wilson.

About Josephine Rowe

Josephine Rowe is the author of two short story collections and the novel A Loving, Faithful Animal (2016). Her fiction and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Best Australian Stories, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, and elsewhere. She is a recent recipient of a Stegner Fellowship in fiction from Stanford University. Her story ‘Suitable for a Lampshade’ won the Reader’s Choice Award in the 2010 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. Read her winning story 'Glisk'.

On March 23, before a big audience at Collected Works Bookshop in Melbourne, Morag Fraser announced the two winners of the 2017 Peter Porter Poetry Prize (worth $7,500). The winners, chosen from a field of nearly 1000 entries from twenty-two countries, are Louis Klee (Vic) for his poem ‘Sentence to Lilacs’ and Damen O’Brien (Qld) for ‘pH’. The winners each receive $2,500.

2017 Porter Prize winners Louis Klee and Damen O'Brien

The other five shortlisted poets – Ronald Dzerigian (USA), Anthony Lawrence (NSW), Michael Lee Phillips (USA), Jen Saunders (NSW), and Jessie Tu (NSW) – each receive $500. The seven shortlisted poems appear in ABR’s March 2017 issue.

The judges were Ali Alizadeh, Jill Jones, and Felicity Plunkett. 

ABR Editor Peter Rose commented: ‘The Porter Prize – now in its twelfth  year – is dear to our hearts at ABR. Year after year it goes on generating hundreds of new poems around the world. This year’s field was by far the largest to date. We thank everyone who entered and heartily congratulate our two winners and the other five shortlisted poets.’

About the winners

Louis Klee lives in Melbourne and is currently studying in Cambridge. He has studied playwriting at NIDA and is an MFA writing candidate at the VCA. He earned a Bachelor of Philosophy at the ANU. His poetry has appeared in Meanjin, Cordite, and Gargouille, among other places, and his plays have been shortlisted for prizes such as The Silvergull Award. He is currently working on his first full-length collection of poems.

Damen O’Brien is a Queensland poet. His work has been published in Cordite and The Courier Mail, and has won or been highly commended in the WB Yeats Poetry Prize, the Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Award, the Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Prize, the Ipswich Poetry Feast, and the FAW Tasmania Poetry Prize.

Please read our Frequently Asked Questions page before contacting us with queries about the Porter Prize.

Click here for more information about past winners and to read their poems.

Click here for more information about the 2017 judges.

We gratefully acknowledge the long-standing support of Ms Morag Fraser AM, and the support of ABR Patrons. The print is donated by Mr Ivan Durrant in honour of Georges Mora.

Ali Alizadeh's collection of poetry, Ashes in the Air (UQP, 2011) was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award. His latest book, Transactions (UQP, 2013), was described as 'twisted', 'vicious' and 'remarkable'. His new book, The Last Days of Jeanne d'Arc, will be published in 2017 by Giramondo Publishing. He lectures at Monash University.

Jill Jones has published nine full-length books of poetry, including Breaking the Days (2015), The Beautiful Anxiety (2014), which won the 2015 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry, and Ash is Here, So are Stars (2012). Her work is represented in major anthologies, including the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (2009) and The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry (2009). Her poetry was included in the 2016 ABR States of Poetry anthology for South Australia. She is a member of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide.

Felicity Plunkett is a poet and critic, and has a PhD from the University of Sydney. Her first collection of poetry Vanishing Point won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize and was shortlisted for several other awards. Felicity’s chapbook Seastrands was published in Vagabond Press’s Rare Objects series in 2011, and she is the editor of Thirty Australian Poets (UQP, 2011). She is Poetry Editor with University of Queensland Press and a widely published reviewer.