South Australia Premier's Award Winner
Dr Shannon Burns has won the SA Premier's Award for best overall published work for his memoir Childhood.
Arts Minister Andrea Michaels presented Dr Burns with the Premier鈥檚 Award for the best overall published work at a ceremony in the Mortlock Chamber of the State Library of South Australia, which administers the awards.
Burns, an 米兰电子-based writer, literary critic and academic, also won the national Non-Fiction Award ($15,000) for Childhood. The memoir recounts his early years bouncing between dysfunctional homes with parents who couldn鈥檛 care for him, before leaving school at 16 to take a job at a recycling centre, and finding solace 鈥 then ultimately a path to a different life 鈥 in reading and literature.
鈥淭he book is startlingly intelligent, written with sophisticated prose, and deeply evokes its place and time,鈥 said the Premier鈥檚 Award judges - Jessica Alice, Verity Laughton and Sean Williams.
鈥淐hildhood stood out as the overall winner against a highly competitive group of winners of their forms and genres as a masterful literary accomplishment that utterly succeeded in concept and execution.鈥