Short list announced — 19.08.2009
Yesterday the shortlist was chosen in the first John Button Prize for writing on politics and public policy.
The shortlist in alphabetical order is:
Chloe Hooper: The Tall Man -- Death and Life on Palm Island (Penguin)
Marcia Langton: The end of `big men' politics (Griffith Review)
Margot O'Neill: Blind Conscience (UNSW Press)
Geoffrey Robertson: The Statute of Liberty -- How Australians can take back their rights (Vintage Books)
Galarrwuy Yunupingu: Tradition, Truth and Tomorrow (The Monthly)
Three pieces of writing on Indigenous subjects are among the shortlist of five, chosen from among nearly 100 entries. The winner of the $20,000 Prize will be announced on Friday August 28 at the Melbourne Writers Festival.
Morag Fraser, chair of the judging panel, said the entries represented a wide range of subjects and of often contested views about Australian politics, but the judges chose the shortlist based on the quality and appeal of the writing rather than the representativeness of the subjects.
``In a Prize created to remember the public life and writing of John Button you would expect that the voices of the shortlisted entries would be distinctive and deft -- and they were,'' she said.
The Prize judges were former NSW Premier Bob Carr, Nobel-Prize winning novelist J.M. Coetzee, 7.30 Report Presenter Kerry O'Brien, Miles Franklin judge and former Eureka Street editor Morag Fraser and political scientist Judith Brett.