Gregory Day wins the 2020 Patrick White Literary Award

We are excited to share that Gregory Day has won the 2020 Patrick White Literary Award.

The award recognises Gregory Day’s achievements as a novelist, poet, short story and nature writer. Previously he has received the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Australian Literary Studies (ALS) Gold Medal. And been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, the NSW Premier’s Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Gregory said:

To be the recipient of the Patrick White Award is a great honour, especially because White’s work has been so formative for me as a novelist. When most of Australia was hellbent on pretending there was no such thing as an inner life, let alone a narrative art that could attest to it, Patrick White proved otherwise. To be recognised for my body of work so far, rather than for a single book, feels perfectly in keeping with my approach to the art of writing, which has always been both ecological and of the long view. For this generous acknowledgment of the fruits of that approach, I am deeply grateful.

The Patrick White Literary Award was established by Nobel Prize winning author Patrick White to advance Australian literature ‘by encouraging the writing of novels, short stories, poetry and plays for publication or performance’. For the past 46 years it has been awarded to an author who has made an ongoing contribution to Australian literature, but may not have received adequate recognition.

Congratulations Gregory!