The Mother Wound by Amani Haydar and Girls in Boys’ Cars by Felicity Castagna win the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards
We are pleased to announce that two Pan Macmillan books have won their respective categories at the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
The Mother Wound by Amani Haydar is the winner of the Prize for Non-fiction at the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, and Girls in Boys’ Cars by Felicity Castagna is the winner of the Prize for Young Adult Writing at the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
This is an outstanding achievement for both books, with the winners each receiving $25,000. The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards were inaugurated by the Victorian Government in 1985 to honour literary achievement by Australian writers. The awards are administered by the Wheeler Centre on behalf of the Premier of Victoria. Find out more here.
About the books
The Mother Wound by Amani Haydar
I am from a family of strong women.’
Amani Haydar suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Five months pregnant at the time, her own perception of how she wanted to mother (and how she had been mothered) was shaped by this devastating murder.
After her mother’s death, Amani began reassessing everything she knew of her parents’ relationship. They had been unhappy for so long – should she have known that it would end like this? A lawyer by profession, she also saw the holes in the justice system for addressing and combating emotional abuse and coercive control.
Amani also had to reckon with the weight of familial and cultural context. Her parents were brought together in an arranged marriage, her mother thirteen years her father’s junior. Her grandmother was brutally killed in the 2006 war in Lebanon, adding complex layers of intergenerational trauma.
Writing with grace and beauty, Amani has drawn from this a story of female resilience and the role of motherhood in the home and in the world. In The Mother Wound, she uses her own strength to help other survivors find their voices.
Girls in Boys’ Cars by Felicity Castagna
A complicated friendship.
A roadtrip in a stolen car.
The stories that define us.
And two funny, sharp, adventurous young women who refuse to be held back any longer.
Rosa was never really trying to hurt anyone, no matter what they said in court.
But she’s ended up in juvenile jail anyway, living her life through books and wondering why her best mate Asheeka disappeared.
A page-turning novel about a complicated friendship; a road trip through NSW in a stolen car; the stories that define us; and two funny, sharp, adventurous young women who refuse to be held back any longer.