Book of the Year Award 2023
The Small Press Network’s Book of the Year (BOTY) Award is an annual award that highlights authorial and publishing excellence by small and independent publishers. Open to any book released by an SPN member during the previous calendar year, the BOTY award provides significant recognition and promotional opportunities to both publisher and author.
The 2023 BOTY shortlist has now been announced, with the winner to be announced as part of the SPN Independent Publishing Conference on 24 November 2023.
The shortlisted titles are The Branded by Jo Riccioni (Pantera), Our Members Be Unlimited by Sam Wallman (Scribe), Paradise (Point of Transmission) by Andrew Sutherland (Fremantle Press), Against Dissapearance: Essays on Memory edited by Leah Jing Mcintosh and Adolfo Aranjuez (Liminal/Pantera), Mabu Mabu by Nornie Bero (Hardie Grant) and Losing Face by George Haddad (UQP).
An honourable mention goes to Lockdown by Chip Le Grand (Monash UP) and This All Come Back Now: An anthology of First Nations speculative fiction edited by Mykaela Saunders (UQP).
Meet the judges of the 2023 Book of the Year Award here.
The 2023 award is sponsored by Ingram, Thorpe-Bowker Identifier Services, Book People, The Wheeler Centre, Readings, Avid Reader, Fullers Bookshop and Bookoccino.
The Winner
Against Disappearance: Essays on Memory
In this collection of new essays from the Liminal & Pantera Press Nonfiction Prize longlist, First Nations writers and writers of colour bend and shift boundaries, query the past and envision new futures. They ask: How do we write or hold our former selves, our ancestries? How does where we come from connect to where we are […]
Judges' Report
The Shortlist
Mabu Mabu
In Mabu Mabu, charismatic First Nations chef Nornie Bero champions the tastes of native flavours in everyday cooking by unlocking the secrets of Australian herbs, spices, vegetables and fruits. Nornie grew up on the island of Mer in the Torres Strait and while her wanderlust would take her to Italian and Japanese kitchens in Melbourne and […]
Judges' Report
The Branded
Isfalk is divided into two classes: the Branded, who are vulnerable to disease, and the Pure, who are bigger, stronger and immune. Orphaned twins Nara and Osha are sequestered in the citadel, where their unbranded skin entitles them to a life of privilege, as precious breeding stock. Nara itches to escape her confines and return […]
Judges' Report
Paradise (Point of Transmission)
This brilliant debut collection examines a ‘haunted’ Queer and HIV-positive identity. It follows an HIV diagnosis and a departure from Singapore as the poet moves from being secretive about his HIV status, towards living a more public life, in which living openly with HIV is characterised by the queer longing toward both resilience and transformation.
Judges' Report
Against Disappearance: Essays on Memory
In this collection of new essays from the Liminal & Pantera Press Nonfiction Prize longlist, First Nations writers and writers of colour bend and shift boundaries, query the past and envision new futures. They ask: How do we write or hold our former selves, our ancestries? How does where we come from connect to where we are […]
Judges' Report
Losing Face
Joey is young, indifferent. He’s drifting around Western Sydney unaware that his passivity is leading him astray. And then one day he is involved in a violent crime, one that threatens to upend his life entirely. Elaine, his grandmother, is a proud Lebanese woman with problems of her own. When Joey is arrested, she is […]
Judges' Report
For a novel about violence, Losing Face is surprisingly tender. George Haddad is a writer with a talent for voice and place, vividly capturing the intensity of Western Sydney. Haddad uses layered intergenerational storytelling to demonstrate the complexity with which lives intertwine and unravel around a violent crime. He avoids delivering neat and easy answers but instead lingers in places that we usually want to look away from. But we don’t look away; Haddad has achieved a page-turning urgency that makes this a compelling reading experience.
Our Members Be Unlimited
In our current political climate, people are looking for answers — and alternatives. The promise of unions is that their ‘members be unlimited’: that they don’t belong to the rich, the powerful, or special interests, but to all workers. How did the idea of unionism arise? Where has it flourished? And what are its challenges […]
Judges' Report
Our Members Be Unlimited by Sam Wallman is an immense achievement. Both a history of the union moment and a personal memoir of Wallman’s own experience of working as a picker at an Amazon warehouse, the personal is political and the political is intensely felt and personal. The graphic medium allows for dense information to be told in an accessible way, while images of the body speak directly to the body of the reader, we recognise the burden of exploitation as an embodied reality. Timely, but also a book that will remain relevant, sadly, for a long time, this important book could play a role in helping younger generations engage with what it means to collectivise and unionise and make informed choices about navigating a lifetime of labour; this book should be considered for secondary curriculums.
Judges
Penni Russon
Penni Russon is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of a number of books for children and teenagers, including Only Ever Always (Delacorte Press), The Endsister (Allen & Unwin) and the Undine trilogy (Greenwillow Books). She’s a senior lecturer in writing at Monash University.
Bec Kavanagh
Bec Kavanagh is a writer, literary critic and academic. She has had fiction and non-fiction published in a variety of publications including Meanjin, Overland, The Big Issue and The Guardian. Bec is the Youth Programming Manager at the Wheeler Centre and a sessional tutor at LaTrobe University.
Tierney Khan
Tierney Khan is a Naarm based writer who, since winning the State Championship of the Plain English Speaking Award (PESA) in 2020, has facilitated and hosted numerous events with The Wheeler Centre. Most recently she was in conversation with feminist icon Wendy McCarthy, as well as guest programmed an event called ‘Something Old, Something New’ […]