National biography award lecturers

I have mentioned the National Biography Award before, but have never dedicated a post to it.

The author’s study of the genre, impressive research and masterful use of McMahon’s unpublished autobiography does much to recover McMahon’s achievements, despite his manifest flaws. I like the fact that more and more awards are providing a monetary prize for the shortlisted works. But we are also left with a sense of exhaustion: how gruellingly hard it is to be deaf, an often invisible disability in a hearing world.

Gideon Haigh is a journalist who has written several well-regarded and award-winning books on sport, media and the automotive industry (among other topics).

All books I’d willingly read … though Alexander’s and Butler’s would be my top priority.

And the winner is: Alison Alexander’s The ambitions of Jane Franklin!

In 2013 it won the NSW Premier’s Prize for Australia. This one intrigues me as Lady Jane Franklin, about whom I’ve written before, was one of those amazing 19th century woman who came to my attention through contemporary novels, including Richard Flanagan’s Wanting and Andrea Barrett’s The voyage of the Narwhal, and a book of poetry titled Jane, Lady Franklin by Tasmanian Adrienne Eberhard.The biography is subtitled, Victorian lady adventurer.

Get started with your online account. The list of lectures, and papers if available, can be found on the State Library of NSW’s website.

The shortlist for 2014 was:

• Alison Alexander’s The ambitions of Jane Franklin (Allen & Unwin).

  Will it be reported on Australian television news tonight? I don’t know Alexander, but she is apparently a Tasmanian historian.

• Steve Bisley’sStillways: A memoir (HarperCollins Publishers). This one is on my TBR. It is based on the war diaries of World War 1 army nurse Sister Kit McNaughton.

  That in itself gives it some appeal to me.

• Janet Butler’s Kitty’s war (University of Queensland Press). Since this Monday musings coincides with the announcement of the 2014 award, I thought it would be a good time to write a little about this award.

  The National Biography Award was initially endowed by Geoffrey Cains, with support a little later by Michael Crouch, and is managed by the State Library of NSW.

  Its aim, says its website, is “to encourage the highest standards of writing in the fields of biography and autobiography, and to promote public interest in these genres”. Steve Bisley is an Australian actor and this book, the website says, is “a classic memoir of an Australian childhood in the sixties”.

  This was similar to last year’s shortlist, and suggests a change – a loosening up – in our expectation and appreciation of biography and autobiography. They increased the prize money for the shortlisted authors, and created a new prize to commemorate Michael Crouch, all of which started last year. He explained that he’d done his PhD in political biography at the University of Canberra in 2014, but hadn’t written one.

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