ACT Book of the Year Award and ACT Poetry Prize announced

ACT Minister for the Arts Joy Burch today announced the winners of the prestigious 2011 ACT Book of the Year Award and the 2011 ACT Poetry Prize.

"I am pleased to announce that Chris Hammer is the recipient of the 2011 ACT Book of the Year Award for his book, The River: A Journey through the Murray Basin and the $10,000 prize," Ms Burch said.

The ACT Book of the Year Award recognises and rewards quality contemporary literary works including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Ms Burch also announced the winners of the accolades under the ACT Poetry Prize which recognise excellence in poetry by emerging and established poets, with prizes collectively worth $20,000.

"Congratulations to Anne Shenfield, the winner of the 2011 Judith Wright Prize, valued at $10,000 for her published collection, You can only get so close on Google Earth."

The other prize winners were Julie Chevalier, winner of the Alec Bolton Prize for her unpublished manuscript Darger - a sequence of poem; Kristen Lang for Goodbye is too small a word and Ms Lizz Murphy for The Architecture of Pear,joint winners of the Rosemary Dobson Prize for an unpublished poem by an Australian poet; and Paul Cliff for Rosemary Gascoigne winner of the David Campbell Prize for an unpublished poem by an ACT-based poet.

"Congratulations to all the winning and short-listed authors for 2011 ACT Book of the Year and the poets for the 2011 ACT Poetry Prize. The calibre of entries for this year's prizes underlines how strong the fields of poetry and writing are in the ACT."

The full citation for the winner of the 2011 ACT Book of the Year Award, and details of the winners and short-listed nominees to the 2011 ACT Poetry Prize, are available at www.arts.act.gov.au