Walter McRae Russell Award
The Walter McRae Russell Award is given to the best book of literary scholarship on an Australian subject published in the preceding two calendar years. Until 1994, the prize was awarded to a young or unestablished author (usually for a first book). Since 1995, the Award has been open to all authors of scholarly works.
Walter McRae Russell Award winner 2025
Thomas H. Ford and Justin Clemens, Barron Field in New South Wales: The Poetics of Terra Nullius. Melbourne U. P., 2023.
Walter McRae Russell Award shortlist 2025
AJ Carruthers, Literary History and Avant-Garde Poetics in the Antipodes: Languages of Invention. Edinburgh U. P. 2024.
Tanya Dalziell, London. The Miegunyah Press, 2024
Thomas H. Ford and Justin Clemens, Barron Field in New South Wales: The Poetics of Terra Nullius. Melbourne U. P., 2023.
Dougal NcNeill, Forms of Freedom: Marxist Essays in New Zealand and Australian Literature, Otago University Press, 2024.
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Walter McRae Russell Award Winner 2023
joint winners Julieanne Lamond, Lohrey
and
Roger Osborne, The Life of Such is Life
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Walter McRae Russell Award Shortlist 2023
Kim Wilkins, Beth Driscoll and Lisa Fletcher, Genre Worlds: Popular Fiction and Twenty-First Century Book Culture
Julieanne Lamond, Lohrey
Roger Osborne, The Life of Such is Life
Denise Varney, Patrick White’s Theatre
Helen Vines, Eve Langley and The Pea Pickers
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Terms and conditions
The Walter McRae Russell Award will be awarded in July 2025.
Nominations may be made either by the author or, with the nominee’s permission, by the book’s publishers or by any member of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL).
The judges’ decision is final.
Submission process
There is a 2-step process.
- Deadline for the nomination form is 25 October 2024.
Please select the appropriate form ASAL Members / public-OR Publisher
Nomination forms must be emailed to [email protected].
- Publishers will need to submit volumes to the judges by 4 November 2024.
Contact details for judges will be provided immediately on receipt of the Nomination Form.
Please note that all submissions will be received in confidence and securely held. Information provided will be used only for the purpose of administering the award.
ASAL thanks everyone for their participation in this process.
Queries
Queries should be directed to Dr Monique Rooney (ASAL Prize Coordinator)
Winner of the Walter McRae Russell Award 2021
Fiona Morrison, Christina Stead and the Matter of America (Sydney UP, 2019)
Shortlist for Walter McRae Russell Award 2021
- Joseph Cummins, The ‘Imagined Sound’ of Australian Literature and Music (Anthem, 2019)
- Tanya Dalziell, Gail Jones: Word, Image, Ethics (Sydney UP, 2020)
- Susan Lever, Creating Australian Television Drama: A Screenwriting History (ASP, 2020)
- Brigid Magner, Locating Australian Literary Memory (Anthem, 2019)
- Brendan McNamee, Grounded Visionary: The Mystic Fictions of Gerald Murnane (Peter Lang, 2019)
- Fiona Morrison, Christina Stead and the Matter of America (Sydney UP, 2019)
- Paul Sharrad, Thomas Keneally’s Career and the Literary Machine (Anthem, 2019)
Winner of the Walter McRae Russell Award 2019
Shortlist for Walter McRae Russell Award 2019
- Katherine Bode, A World of Fiction: Digital Collections and the Future of Literary History, University of Michigan Press, 2018.
- David Carter and Roger Osborne, Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace, 1840-1940s, Sydney University Press, 2018.
- Jessica Gildersleeve, Christos Tsiolkas: The Utopian Vision, Cambria Press, 2017.
- Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Like Nothing on this Earth: A Literary History of the Wheatbelt, UWA Publishing, 2017.
- Brigid Rooney, Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity, Anthem Press, 2018.
Longlist for Walter McRae Russell Award 2019
- Katherine Bode, A World of Fiction: Digital Collections and the Future of Literary History, University of Michigan Press, 2018.
- David Carter and Roger Osborne, Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace, 1840-1940s, Sydney University Press, 2018.
- Ken Gelder and Rachel Weaver, Colonial Australian Fiction, Sydney University Press, 2017.
- Jessica Gildersleeve, Christos Tsiolkas: The Utopian Vision, Cambria Press, 2017.
- Sneja Gunew, Post-Multicultural Writers as Neo-cosmopolitan Mediators, Anthem Press, 2017.
- Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Like Nothing on the Earth: A Literary History of the Wheatbelt, UWA Press, 2017.
- Simone Murray, The Digital Literary Sphere, Johns Hopkins Press, 2018.
- Brigid Rooney, Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity, Anthem Press, 2018.
Walter McRae Russell Judging panel for 2019:
Chair: Elizabeth Webby (Chair): [email protected]
Brigitta Olubas
Marguerite Nolan
More Information:
Previous Winners
2017 Elizabeth McMahon, Islands, Identity and the Literary Imagination (Anthem, 2016).
2015 Jointly awarded: Robert Dixon, Alex Miller: the Ruin of Time (Sydney University Press, 2014) and Michelle Grossman, Entangled Subjects: Indigenous/Australian Cross-Cultures of Talk, Text, and Modernity (Rodopi, 2013).
2013 Nicole Moore, The Censor’s Library (UQP, 2012).
2011 Jointly awarded: David Callahan, Rainforest Narratives: the Work of Janette Turner Hospital (UQP) and John McLaren, Journey Without Arrival: The Life and Writing of Vincent Buckley (ASP). Link to Judges’ report
2009 Noel Rowe, Ethical Investigations: Essays on Australian Literature and Poetics. Ed. Bernadette Brennan (Vagabond, 2008). Link to Judges’ report
2007 Katherine Barnes, The Higher Self in Christopher Brennan’s Poems: Esotericism, Romanticism, Symbolism (Brill, 2006). Link to Judges’ report
2005 Jointly awarded: Tanya Dalziell, Settler Romance and the Australian Girl (UWA Press, 2004), and Maryrose Casey Creating Frames: Contemporary Indigenous Theatre 1967-1997 (UQP, 2004). Link to Judges’ report
2003 Sylvia Lawson, How Simone de Beauvoir Died in Australia
2001 Gillian Whitlock, The Intimate Empire: Reading Women’s Autobiography.
1999 Helen Gilbert, Sightlines: Race, Gender and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre (University of Michigan Press)
1998 David Carter, A Career in Writing:Judah Waten and the cultural politics of a literary career (ASAL Literary Studies)
1997 Paul Carter, The Lie of the Land (Faber)
1996 Richard Fotheringham, In Search of Steele Rudd (UQP)
1995 Patrick Buckridge, The Scandalous Penton (UQP)
1994 Hazel Rowley, Christina Stead (Heinemann)
1993 Peter Kirkpatrick, The Sea Coast of Bohemia (UQP)
1992 Julian Croft, The Life and Opinions of Tom Collins (UQP)
1991 Cliff Hanna, The Folly of Spring: a study of the poetry of John Shaw Neilson (UQP)
1990 Adam Shoemaker, Black Words, White Page (UQP)
1989 Susan Sheridan, Christina Stead (Harvester Wheatsheaf)
1988 Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay
1987 Graeme Turner, National Fictions
1986 Susan Magarey, Unbridling the Tongues of Women
1985 Craig Munro, Wild Man of Letters
1984 Sylvia Lawson, The Archibald Paradox
1983 Drusilla Modjeska, Exiles at Home
