Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here is currently shortlisted for the Premier’s Prize for Non-fiction in the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Awards. It is always very special to be recognised for your work in your home territory. Tasmania has been the wellspring of all my writing. The prizes are biennial – so this is a late and lovely surprise for the memoir! And it’s a great honour to be listed alongside esteemed historian Lucy Frost, beloved author Maggie MacKellar and editor and academic Matthew Lamb. Read extracts of each work on the links in the judges’ comments below. Thank you to all the judges. My fellow shortlisted authors are:
We have been thrilled by the quality, diversity and interest of the books nominated for the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Awards. After selecting a fascinating longlist, we were faced with some difficult decisions in narrowing this down to only four books. In the end, we were in close agreement: those we have chosen resonated most strongly with the committee for many different reasons, but we would like to congratulate all the authors whose magnificent works we have carefully considered and so greatly enjoyed.
Lucy Frost’s Convict Orphans gives a fascinating insight into an underexplored dimension of colonial Australian history: the many children who found themselves displaced and disenfranchised by the convict system and the extraordinary challenges they faced. Beautifully and sensitively written, the book is a testament to Frost’s expertise and rigour as a historian, illuminating stories of deprivation and brutality, but also of resilience, hope, kindness and survival.
We have relished reading Matthew Lamb’s Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths. Not only does this first book in a planned two-volume biography take on one of Australia’s most vivid literary figures with impressive detail and insight – it works as a social and cultural history of the author’s context, complete with the challenges he posed to the sexual mores and conventions of his times. Crucial to this is its broader exploration of Australia’s literary development, which makes this book (even!) bigger than the sum of its parts.
Maggie Mackellar’s Graft is a beautifully written memoir that takes us through a year of drought on a merino wool farm and the events and challenges that had led her there. Her intimate love for and knowledge of this piece of land on lutruwita/Tasmania’s East Coast and the fragile and resilient life it sustains is evocatively, poetically and generously shared with the reader. With elements of the best of nature writing, memoir and as a meditation on parenthood, this is a stunning book.
What a life! In Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here, Heather Rose shares her unconventional life in a lightly compelling prose style that captures the book’s complex themes with deceptive simplicity. From devastating tragedy and grief to extreme pursuits of spirituality, self-discovery and so much in between, Rose conveys her remarkable experiences in a way that allows them to be felt and understood. The undercurrent of loss and sadness runs seamlessly in parallel with joy, humour and love.
