AustLit

'There has been no shortage of Australian critiques of literary prizes over the last few years. Giramondo’s Ivor Indyk argued that ‘no one is really suitable to be a judge of literary prizes’ and therefore ‘we should get rid of prizes altogether’. Terri-ann White, the director of University of Western Australia Publishing, announced in 2016 that the press would no longer enter its titles in literary awards, because ‘the expense (of entry fees, books and postage) and the time involved in . . . has exceeded our resources’. In what may be the most incisive and blistering recent critique, Maxine Beneba Clarke raised a series of pointed questions about prize-awarding practices, noting their ‘conservative shortlists’, the lack of diversity among awardees, and the absence of ‘a major book award for queer writing’.'  (Introduction)