ACT Book of the Year
>>2024 >> About the ACT Book of the Year
Winner
 | Darren Rix and Craig Cormick |   |
JUDGES' CITATION
Warra Warra Wai is a profoundly important and timely work that offers a unique lens on history, land, and identity through a First Nations perspective. Framed as a journey it invites readers to walk alongside its storytellers, absorbing living history with empathy and reflection.
The book’s collaborative nature, weaving together Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices, was praised for its respectful and consultative approach. It avoids preaching or finger-pointing, instead offering truth with grace. It retains the primacy of its own voice even while authentically preserving the voices of over a hundred contributors. Through an updated Australian East Coast map, it restores traditional names for locations, honouring First Nations history and cartography. The result is a powerful, accessible work that resonates across communities and generations.
Judges highlighted the book’s genre-defying qualities—part memoir, part historical reflection, part poetic restitution. The inclusion of photographs and artworks serve as anchors throughout the journey, enhancing the emotional and cultural resonance. The use of traditional scholarship alongside personal narrative, and the shore-to-ship perspective all contribute to its originality and impact. The overall effect was deeply affecting and educational.
Warra Warra Wai stands as a significant contribution to Australian literature—one that will be viewed as a work of genre excellence, cultural significance, and enduring relevance well into the future.
SYNOPSIS
For the first time, the First Nations story of Cook's arrival, and what blackfellas want everyone to know about the coming of Europeans. Both 250 years late and extremely timely, this is an account of what First Nations people saw and felt when James Cook navigated their shores in 1770. We know the European story from diaries, journals and letters. For the first time, this is the other side. Who were the people watching the Endeavour sail by? How did they understand their world and what sense did they make of this strange vision? And what was the impact of these first encounters with Europeans? The answers lie in tales passed down from 1770 and in truth-telling of the often more brutal engagements that followed. Darren Rix (a Gunditjmara-GunaiKurnai man, radio reporter and Archie Roach's nephew) and his co-author Craig Cormick travelled to all the places on the east coast that were renamed by Cook, and listened to people's stories. With their permission, these stories have been woven together with the European accounts and placed in their deeper context: the places Cook named already had names; the places he 'discovered' already had peoples and stories stretching back before time; and although Cook sailed on, the empire he represented impacted the people's lives and lands immeasurably in the years after. 'Warra Warra Wai' was the expression called to Cook and his crew when they tried to make landfall in Botany Bay. It has long been interpreted as 'Go away', but is perhaps more accurately translated as 'You are all dead spirits'. In adding the First Nations version of these first encounters to the story of Australian history, this is a book that will sit on Australian shelves alongside Cook's Journals, Dark Emu and The Fatal Shore as one of our foundational texts.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Darren Rix, a Gunditjmara-GunaiKurnai man with Ngarigo bloodlines, grew up in the tin huts and tents of ‘Silver City’, South Nowra, with his eleven siblings. His family later got their first house in the Bega Valley, and he attended school in Bega. At fourteen, Darren moved to Ngunnawal country – Canberra – to which he has songline ties through his Ngarigo bloodlines. He has worked as a radio reporter for the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association, and with the Ngunnawal people as a cultural sites officer in Canberra. Darren is an accomplished musician, as was his uncle, Archie Roach. He has appeared in the TV program Rake. Darren has six children and twelve grandchildren.
Dr Craig Cormick OAM is an award-winning author and science communicator. He has published many more books than he has children and grandchildren (and he has four and three of those respectively). He was born on Dharawal Country – Wollongong – and has lived in the Blue Mountains and Queensland. He currently lives on Ngunnawal land in Canberra. He has been Chair of the ACT Writers Centre, co-host of the literary podcast Secrets from the Green Room, and has edited several magazines and books. He is drawn to stories of people whose voices have been hidden from history.
Shortlist
 | Theodore Ell Lebanon Days : memories of an ancient land through economic meltdown, a revolution of hope and surviving the 2020 Beirut explosion Atlantic Books Australia |  |
JUDGES' CITATION
Lebanon Days is a lyrical, deeply reflective work that will captivate readers with its poetic precision and emotional resonance. Through a candid and intimate lens, the author offers readers a rare and powerful insight into Lebanon’s complex social and political landscape, drawing from personal experience with remarkable restraint and elegance.
The narrative balances the outsider’s gaze with the insider’s depth, inviting readers to stand both close to the action, yet aware of their distance. The writing is beautifully controlled, never indulgent, and profoundly moving, with standout moments described as some of the best writing the judges had ever read.
The book’s structure—supported by a thoughtfully crafted glossary and map—enhances its accessibility, helping readers navigate unfamiliar, tumultuous terrain while deepening their understanding of Lebanon’s underbelly and lived realities. The author’s devotion to language and literature shines through every page, offering a portrait as intimate as that of a diplomatic spouse, yet grounded in empathy and objectivity.
The judges praised the work as a standout achievement in contemporary literature, with its excellent pace, narration, and its ability to resonate personally while remaining universally relevant.
SYNOPSIS
A captivating memoir that unravels the emotional struggles of a nation the world has long overlooked. Through the eyes of an outsider, this story takes a deep dive into the intimate details of Lebanon's hardships, providing a profound understanding of its people and their journey.
Writer and researcher Theodore Ell accompanied his wife on her diplomatic posting to Lebanon and unexpectedly found himself a witness to a country on the brink of collapse. In 2019, facing economic meltdown, the people of Lebanon rose up, united in a revolution of hope. With the country on the precipice of war, Covid-19 then swept in and the eerie quiet of lockdowns descended—a silence tragically shattered in August 2020, when Ell narrowly survived the largest ever non-nuclear peacetime explosion, which destroyed half of Beirut. Everywhere from calm cedar forests to crowded Beirut bars, Ell listened to stories of the Lebanese people and tried to make sense of the maze of ideas, desires and illusions that create the Lebanon of their imagination, a place in sharp contrast to reality. In prose as lucid as it is emotionally rich, and based on reportage that won Ell the 2021 Calibre Prize, Lebanon Days welcomes those who wish to understand more than news footage can convey.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Theodore Ell was born in Sydney in 1984. He studied literature and modern languages at the University of Sydney, spent periods of further study and research in Italy and was awarded a PhD in 2010. For several years he earned a living freelance as an editor, translator and researcher, and co-founded the international journal Contrappasso Magazine, of which he was co-editor.
Ell moved to Canberra in 2015 to begin working in the public service. From 2018 to 2021 he lived in Lebanon, accompanying his wife on a diplomatic posting. Ell's essay 'Façades of Lebanon', about Lebanese revolution and the Beirut port explosion, won the 2021 Calibre Essay Prize. His poetry collection Beginning in Sight shared the 2022 Anne Elder Award.
Ell's poetry, essays, translations and non-fiction have been published in Australia, Italy, the United Kingdom and Lebanon. He is an honorary lecturer in literature at the Australian National University.
 | Qin Qin Model Minority Gone Rogue : how an unfulfilled daughter or a tiger mother went way off script Hachette Australia |  |
JUDGES' CITATION
Model Minority Gone Rogue is a bold, genre-bending work that defies convention with its hybrid, modern style and unflinching honesty. Judges described it as myth-busting literature—part burnout memoir, part interior journey—marked by raw reflections on mental health, coercive relationships, and the pressures of cultural expectation.
Conversational in tone and rich with self-deprecating humour, the author is applauded for the decision to embrace messiness—both in structure and content— as a deliberate and commendable move, reflecting the chaotic reality of burnout and identity crisis. The depictions of emotionally unavailable parents, the complexities of overachievement, mental health struggles, and the tension between corporate success and personal truth will strike a chord with a wide readership. The narrative’s asides, hashtags, and footnotes added texture, though as the story settles into its emotional core, its bravery and clarity shine through.
This is a noisy story—one that refuses to be quiet or polished, and in doing so, makes space for others to speak. Model Minority Gone Wrong is a striking contribution to a growing sub-genre of burnout literature, offering a fresh and fearless voice in contemporary storytelling.
SYNOPSIS
We all grow up with rules. Do this, be this, don't be that. Qin Qin was all about the rules: do your homework, be good, don't rock the boat. She was the model daughter, model student and model minority. But doing everything right? It made her lost and miserable. So she decided to take a spectacular risk and change everything. At 23, Qin Qin was an unhappy overachiever working for a prestigious law firm. So she quit. She didn't know what else was out there, but she wanted to find out. She changed paths, changed countries, changed her entire view of what the world could be, and who she could be - with some primal screaming and tree-hugging along the way. In the process, she discovered the person she truly was, not who she thought she should be. Model Minority Gone Rogue is a funny, sad, exhilarating and thought-provoking true story about what happens when you want to live life on your own terms, even when those terms go against everything you've ever known. It's a story of what happens when you choose love over fear and honour your authentic self: life can be bigger and brighter than anything you had ever imagined.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Qin Qin was born in Southwest China and grew up in Canberra as a first-generation Chinese Australian. She began her career as a model minority poster child at five-years-old. By 29, she was a Harvard graduate with four degrees working for UNICEF. After a quarter-life crisis, Qin Qin realised life wasn't an exam to ace and veered off-script. That gave her the courage to pursue her own path. She was recognised for her work and named a 40 under 40: Most Influential Asian Australian in 2020 and a past winner of the Young Australia China Alumni of the Year Award.
Qin Qin now lives in Canberra with her husband James and golden retriever Oprah. After recovering from an internet and technology addiction, Qin Qin rediscovered her love of writing. She was shortlisted for Penguin Australia's 2021 Write It Fellowship and received a residency at Varuna The National Writers' House in 2023. Qin Qin continues to unlearn social expectations, heal from trauma and limiting beliefs, and to figure out what she is doing with her life. Her life mission is to live consciously with love, towards a more peaceful and sustainable world.
 | Andra Putnis Stories My Grandmothers Didn't Tell Me : two women's journey's from war-torn Europe to a new life in Australia Allen and Unwin |  |
JUDGES' CITATION
Stories My Grandmothers Didn’t Tell Me is a well-constructed and engaging memoir that balances personal narrative with historical reflection, set uniquely in Latvia. The triumph of the work is how the content is carefully pared back to its most impactful elements that keep the story driving forwards. The judges appreciated the author’s ability to balance traumatic and haunting events with light, humour and reflection.
The alternating structure between the voices of grandmothers is a unique and moving device, contributing to the book’s emotional depth. The lives of ordinary women and children, migration, story sovereignty, and the question of who gets to tell their story were highlighted as central to the book’s impact. As a memoir it is resonant with many contemporary issues, particularly the persistence of conflict and the paramount need to protect children.
Through its distinctive setting and well-crafted storytelling, Stories My Grandmother Didn’t Tell Me initiates intimate conversations about history, identity, voice and intergenerational storytelling.
SYNOPSIS
As children, we sneaked into Grandma's bedroom, discovering fur coats, folk costumes and amber mountains. Andra breaks an unspoken family code not to dig too deeply into the past, and is plunged into the bleak world of the Soviet and Nazi occupations of Latvia in World War II, and the secret lives of her grandmothers. Teenage Aline is separated from her parents and sent to serve in Germany's wartime labour force. With the much-feared Soviet army on the doorstep, pregnant Milda embarks on a desperate winter escape with her young son. They each face heart-wrenching decisions and endure years of hardship before finally voyaging to Australia. Among the tight-knit Latvian migrant community, Aline and Milda forge new lives. But even there, reminders of wartime scandal and grief threaten to drag them under.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andra Putnis is a writer and social researcher based in Canberra with her partner and two children. Stories My Grandmothers Didn't Tell Me is her debut book.
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