ACT Book of the Year
Winner 2019
 | Robyn Cadwallader |  |
SYNOPSIS
LONDON, 1321: In a small shop in Paternoster Row, three people are drawn together around the creation of a magnificent illuminated prayer book. Even though the commission seems to answer the aspirations of each one of them, their secrets, desires and ambitions threaten its completion. As each struggles to see the book come into being, it will change everything they have understood about their place in the world.Rich, deep, sensuous and full of life, Book of Colours is also, most movingly, a profoundly beautiful story about creativity and connection, and our instinctive need to understand our world and communicate with others through the pages of a book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robyn is an editor and writer. She has published numerous, prize-winning short stories and reviews, as well as a book of poetry and a non-fiction book based on her PhD thesis concerning attitudes to virginity and women in the Middle Ages.
Her first novel, The Anchoress was received with critical acclaim and was awarded a Canberra Critics’ Circle Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the 2016 ACT Book of the Year, also winning the ACT Book of the Year People’s Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the ABIA Awards (Debut Fiction), the Adelaide Festival Literary Awards, and longlisted for the ABIA Awards (Literary Fiction and New Author).
In response to the government’s policies on asylum-seekers, she edited a book of essays by prominent lawyers and activists, We Are Better Than This (ATF Press, 2015). Book of Colours is her second novel.
Highly Commended 2019
 | Ellen Broad |  |
SYNOPSIS
Who is designing AI? A select, narrow group. How is their world view shaping our future?
Artificial intelligence can be all too human: quick to judge, capable of error, vulnerable to bias. It's made by humans, after all. Humans make decisions about the laws and standards, the tools, the ethics in this new world. Who benefits. Who gets hurt.
Made by Humans explores our role and responsibilities in automation. Roaming from Australia to the UK and the US, elite data expert Ellen Broad talks to world leaders in AI about what we need to do next. It is a personal, thought-provoking examination of humans as data and humans as the designers of systems that are meant to help us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ellen Broad is an independent consultant and expert in data sharing, open data and AI ethics. She has worked in technology policy and implementation in global roles, including as head of policy for Open Data Institute and as manager of digital projects and policy for the International Federation of Library Associations & Institutions. In Australia, she ran the Australian Digital Alliance. Broad has provided independent advice on data and digital issues to governments, UN bodies and multinational tech companies. She has testified before committees of the European and Australian parliaments, written articles for New Scientist and The Guardian, spoken at SXSW and been a guest of ABC Radio National programs Big Ideas and Future Tense. Ellen designed a board game about data with ODI CEO Jeni Tennison that is currently being played in nineteen countries.
 | Joy McCann |  |
SYNOPSIS
The remarkable story of the Southern Ocean (AKA the Antarctic or Austral Ocean), from its birth in deep geological time to the present day. Flowing completely around the Earth and unimpeded by any landmass, the Southern Ocean reaches from the seasonally-shifting ice continent of Antarctica to the southern coastlines and islands of Australia, New Zealand, South America and South Africa. In Wild Sea Joy McCann interweaves the fascinating environmental and cultural histories of the Southern Ocean, drawing from a vast archive of charts and maps, sea captains' journals, whalers' log books, missionary correspondence, voyagers' letters, scientific reports, stories and myths. In a hybrid space where science, technology, culture, imagination and myth converge, Wild Sea explores this little-known ocean and its emerging importance as a barometer of planetary climate change.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joy McCann is an Australian social and environmental historian with research interests in landscape and memory in settler societies, the history of oceanography in the Southern Hemisphere, and scientific and cultural constructions of the deep ocean. She completed her PhD at the ANU in 2006. She has extensive experience as a public historian in the heritage and museums sector, and is currently a senior researcher at the Parliamentary Library in Canberra.
Shortlist 2019
 | Andrew Hutchinson |  |
SYNOPSIS
Love can rule your life. Change your personality. Your everyday existence can be shaped by the opinion of one person. It seems crazy - so why do we do it? Why do we let the thoughts of someone else govern our decisions and actions? He had his heart broken by his one true love, and cannot see a way forward in life. Having alienated himself from his family and friends, he works nights and shuns normal society. But not even disrupted sleep and depression can explain the strange behaviours that will suddenly take over him. It all escalates on an unassuming night, when he returns home to find a woman asleep in his driveway. Waiting.One probes the extremes we go to for love; the extent of emotional influence; the scars we leave on each other. The novel asks, who do you become when you're driven to obsession? Fast-paced, immediate and perceptive, One is the highly original second novel from a young Australian writer establishing himself as a major talent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Hutchinson lives in Canberra, Australia. His first novel, Rohypnol, won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript and was commended for the Kathleen Mitchell Award.
 | Rachel Sanderson |  |
SYNOPSIS
Abbie Fray has moved with her family from Sydney to Derrington, a country town where everybody knows everybody and the mobile reception sucks. She's left behind her best friend, her school, and her favourite bakery. She thinks her life can't get any worse.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Sanderson was born in Adelaide, Australia. She’s worked as a bakery assistant, cleaner, telemarketer selling life insurance, yoga instructor, researcher and public servant. She co-wrote a documentary film, The End of the Rainbow,which won a First Appearance Award at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. The Space Between, her first book, is about a teenage girl whose best friend goes missing. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Ampersand Prize and the 2018 ACT Book of the Year award. Mirror Me, is her second novel.
 | Penelope Layland |  |
SYNOPSIS
This new volume from Penelope Layland absorbingly quizzes memory, while questioning our apprehension of time and the importance of deep human connections. These poems explore mourning and loss in a way that is salutary, affirmative, meditative and uplifting, subtly refracting our common understandings and our claims on knowledge. In these works the ghosted quotidian, like a long filigree of light, reaches out to remind us of what we value and care for.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Penelope Layland has published two books of poetry: The Unlikely Orchard (Molonglo Books) and Suburban Anatomy (Pandanus Books). She has worked as a journalist, speechwriter and as a communications professional.