Penguin Books Australia

Non-Fiction

The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper, and will now go in the running for the overall Book of the Year Award.

The Indie Book of the Year Award will be announced on Monday 28 September 2009.

For more information visit: indies.com.au

The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction

The Boat by Nam Le

Breath by Tim Winton

The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction

The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper

Darwin's Armada by Iain McCalman

The Prize for Young Adult Fiction

Something in the World Called Love by Sue Saliba

For more details and the full listing please visit: .slv.vic.gov.au

Not Untrue & Not Unkind by Ed O'Loughlin (Penguin - Ireland)

Love and Summer by William Trevor (Penguin - Viking)

For more information visit themanbookerprize.com

Edited extract from Melina Marchetta's acceptance speech

I know some people have a thirty page rule. I wish they didn't. I'd like to think there are so many wonderful surprises on page 31 of someone's story. I'd like to think that the first line of a novel doesn't make sense if you haven't read the last. That they may discover that I've written a story about something more than territory wars between Boarders and Townies and Cadets.

For me, Jellicoe Road is a story of love between people, regardless of gender and age. It's about the mistakes adults make for all the right reasons. It's about redemption being possible in the most tragic of circumstances. It's about girls challenging the boys they love and swooning when one tells her the extent of her importance in his life; and it's about boys fighting the battles within the territory of their hearts. It's about staying individual and still belonging to a community. It's about pointing out the beauty of wonder in the midst of ugliness

So I'd like to thank Mary and the Printz committee for giving my purpose a platform. For introducing more readers to a story that in some parts, I regret writing because their circumstances break my heart.

I'd like to thank the community of writers I belong to. Those who emailed me back home and from afar, when the decision was announced. A writer spends a lot of time on their own. Even when we're with friends and family, a part of us is elsewhere constructing. Half the time we think we're geniuses. The other half of the time, with the same passion, we think we're failures. That no one will be interested in reading what we've written. Fellow writers kind of get it. They make you feel less lonely.

And for Margo Lanagan and Emily Lockhart and Tobin Anderson and Terry Pratchett for constantly writing at a standard that raises the bar, not just with these novels, but with everything they've written. It was like receiving a second award when I heard my name read out with theirs.

My agents Jill Grinberg and, Sophie Hamley and my Australian publisher of Jellicoe, Laura Harris for creating an environment of kindness in our dealings, who have never once made me feel like a product. In a world of construct, I've been lucky enough to be around people, who are in love with story telling and language rather than marketing and readers' polls.

And for my mum who put an Enid Blyton book in my hands when I was seven, especially the naughtiest girl boarding school stories. Such novels may not be bursting with literary worth, but it sparked my imagination and I've been reading ever since. And the beloved people in my life who keep me very grounded, who go around saying that Jellicoe has a bigger body count than Hamlet, who tell me every couple of years when a novel comes out, that sometimes they forget all the magical stuff is in my head trying to get out.

And I'd like to thank L M Montgomery for creating Anne Shirley and writing the scene when she wacks Gilbert Blythe over the head with a slate, and Harper Lee for creating Scout and Jem and Boo Radley, and Charles Dickens for writing the words Never wonder, Luisa. Because the spirit off all those characters went into the writing of Jellicoe. For Yeats who explores the concept of solace in the Lake Isle of Innesfree because his words gave Hannah's House by the river its soul and for Louis Sacher for writing Holes and giving me a lesson in structure.

For Australian writers such as Margo Lanagan and Markus Zusak and Garth Nix and Sonya Hartnett and Judith Clarke and John Marsden and everyone else published overseas before me, for unleashing the Australian vernacular onto the world. It's so important for us to retain our voice in an overseas market, now more than any other time. But mostly, thank you to YALSA and Booklist for their generosity in allowing us foreigners to be part of such an important award.

Recently, at a YA festival I was asked to comment on this genre of YA and my readership. It gets too complicated, sometimes, because audience is the last thing you're thinking of when you write. But I just love that teenagers read my work.

It's a privileged place we hold in their lives. We have access to places that most people don't. We're in those bedrooms late at night; we're in the very dark place of a young person who feels rage at the world; we've been told we make black holes a bit smaller. We try to make sense of a world that stopped making sense to even their parents.

I don't think for one moment, that's our responsibility as writers, but I'm glad that it's our reality.

So thank you for allowing me to cast my net much further. To Michael L Printz for such a vision and passion. To whoever decided that this conference would be in Chicago.

But finally, to the librarians and English teachers.

Adult writers sell books, at times because of their literary worth, but also because of the enthusiasm of the mainstream press. Young Adult novels sell because of the passion of librarians and English teachers and booksellers and bloggers.

We survive on your word of mouth. You're the mediums between writers and readers.

You help us serve our purpose.

The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper has been named on the longlist for the John Button Prize 2009.

The shortlist will be revealed towards the end of July and the winner announced during the Melbourne Writers Festival.

For more information visit: mwf.com.au