Kate Challis RAKA 2021 Commendation

Fri 19 Nov 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Taboo cover - click to view full size“The Kate Challis Ruth Adeney Koori Award, or RAKA, which means ‘five’ in the Pintupi language is awarded to an Indigenous artist in one of five categories annually, including: creative prose, poetry, script writing, drama and visual arts” and this year’s winner is Tara June Winch’s novel The Yield, a novel I read and highly recommend. Although I think all the awards it has piled up — including the Miles Franklin Award, sort of like the Australian Booker Prize — might be strong enough rec. Of the award, Ms. Winch says:

I’m a Wiradjuri woman, who grew up on Dtharawal country. I want to acknowledge the Country on which you read these words, and acknowledge my fellow writers whose beloved work was published in the last five years. I also want to recognise those writers commended, my mentors, colleagues and friends — Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko and Kim Scott. I feel as if I’m only still at the beginning of my career as an interrogator and questioner of the past, present and future of ourselves and our nation, so it is a distinction that I will endeavour to work to, and pay respect to, in my ensuing works and years.

Kim Scott’s novel Taboo is one of three commended novels. We published Taboo in North America and I was lucky enough to attend the Library of Congress National Book Festival and spend some time with Kim, one of the highlights of pre-pandemic time. Here’s a short video of him reading from Taboo during the panel.

The full commendation for the three novels can be found here and here’s an excerpt from the note on Taboo:

‘Takes the reader along a spiritual path deep into the land and its stories, with characters as earthy, as real, as stumbling, as flawed and enlightened, and as courageous as any characters you would want to find in an epic tale.’