News Archive

UWA Publishing's poetry collection Six Different Windows by Paul Hetherington has won the 2014 Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Poetry.Premier Colin Barnett presented the award to Hetherington at a ceremony held in the Hackett Hall Gallery at the Western Australian Museum on Monday 22 September.

"The Premier's Book Awards recognise literary excellence and I would like to congratulate all of this year's winners," Barnett said.

"Literature is an important element of a culturally rich society. Reading and understanding the written word is not only empowering, it can be life changing. These awards help to encourage more West Australians to pick up a book."

Ranging across art and poetry, the past and the present, homelands and far-off lands, Six Different Windows meditates on childhood, riffs on mythology, and draws on the familiar.

Four other UWA Publishing books were shortlisted in the Awards: Stella's Sea by Sally-Ann Jones in the Emerging Writers category; Seeking Wisdom by Jenny Gregory and The Marriage Knot by Penelope Hetherington in the Western Australian History category; and Elemental by Amanda Curtin in the Fiction category.

Three of the shortlisted authors are staff and alumni at The University of Western Australia: Sally-Ann Jones, Jenny Gregory and Penelope Hetherington.

Eleven authors and two illustrators will share $130,000 in prize money from this year's Awards.

This year's Awards saw 552 books entered over nine categories, with the State Library noting strong entries from WA publishing houses including UWA Publishing.

For more information on the Awards, visit https://pba.slwa.wa.gov.au/

Media references

Kiri Falls (UWA Publishing Marketing Manager)  61 8 6488 6806 / 0428 136 847

David Stacey (University Media Manager) 61 8 6488 3229 / 0432 637 716