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Best Non-Fiction Book
Subcategory of Walkley Award
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Notes

  • This category of the Walkley Awards was inaugurated in 2005.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2020

winner Lucie Morris-Marr for Fallen: The Inside Story of the Secret Trial and Conviction of Cardinal George Pell

Year: 2019

winner y separately published work icon Any Ordinary Day Any Ordinary Day : Blindsides, Resilience and What Happens After the Worst Day of Your Life Leigh Sales , London : Hamish Hamilton , 2018 14402791 2018 single work autobiography

'In this wise and layered book, Leigh talks intimately with people who’ve faced the unimaginable, from terrorism to natural disaster to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Expecting broken lives, she instead finds strength, hope, even humour. Leigh brilliantly condenses the cutting-edge research on the way the human brain processes fear and grief, and poses the questions we too often ignore out of awkwardness. Along the way, she offers an unguarded account of her own challenges and what she’s learned about coping with life’s unexpected blows.

'Warm, candid and empathetic, this book is about what happens when ordinary people, on ordinary days, are forced to suddenly find the resilience most of us don’t know we have.' (Publisher's website)

Year: 2018

winner Helen Pitt

Year: 2017

winner y separately published work icon Cardinal : The Rise and Fall of George Pell Louise Milligan , Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 2017 11416991 2017 single work biography

'George Pell is the most recognisable face of the Australian Catholic Church. He was the Ballarat boy with the film-star looks who studied at Oxford and rose through the ranks to become the Vatican's indispensable 'Treasurer'. As an outspoken defender of church orthodoxy, 'Big George's' ascendancy within the clergy was remarkable and seemingly unstoppable.

'The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse has brought to light horrific stories about sexual abuse of the most vulnerable and provoked public anger at the extent of the cover-up. George Pell has always portrayed himself as the first man in the Church to tackle the problem. But questions about what the Cardinal knew, and when, have persisted.

'The nation's most prominent Catholic is now the subject of a police investigation into allegations spanning decades that he too abused children. Louise Milligan is the only Australian journalist who has been privy to the most intimate stories of complainants.

'She pieces together a series of disturbing pictures of the Cardinal's knowledge and his actions, many of which are being told here for the first time.

'Conspiracy or cover-up? Cardinal uncovers uncomfortable truths about a culture of sexual entitlement, abuse of trust and how ambition can silence evil. ' (Publication summary)

Year: 2015

winner Chip Le Grand for The Straight Dope, Melbourne University Press

Works About this Award

Undercover Susan Wyndham , 2009 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 5-6 December 2009; (p. 26)
A column canvassing current literary news including reports on the appointment of Kathy Bail as the new Chief Executive of UNSW Press, Graham Freudenberg's win the Walkley Awards and interim results from Australian Book Review's favourite novel poll.
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