Researched and written over four years, Edenglassie is a multi-generational saga that jumps between 2024 and 1855, a period in Brisbane’s history when populations of white and black were evenly balanced, and the Indigenous “freedom fighter”, Dundalli, was to be executed for leading settler attacks.

Judges described Edenglassie as “brilliant”: “Its prose sparks with electricity and the characters linger long in the reader’s mind,” said publisher Julia Carlomagno. “It is a book that expands understanding. It takes readers on a journey involving the heart, the mind and the eye.”

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It’s the eighth major award for Lucashenko’s seventh novel. Her sixth, Too Much Lip, won the 2019 Miles Franklin Award.

So far this year, Edenglassie has been named winner of the ARA Historical Novel Prize, Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award, the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction and the 2024 Queensland Premier’s Award for a work of state significance. It will be eligible for the NSW Premier’s award next year.

Lucashenko is in the early stages of writing a crime comedy set in NSW’s northern rivers. Titled Blood on the Tiles, it’s a murder set among members of a Scrabble club.

Singer-songwriter Deborah Conway took home the $4000 Nib People’s Choice Prize for her memoir, Book of Life.

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