The shortlist of nominees for the 2008 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature has been announced.

The biennial awards, with total prize money of $130,000, have attracted 667 entries across nine categories. Ten awards are made including six national awards: children's literature ($15,000), fiction ($15,000), innovation ($10,000), nonfiction ($15,000), the John Bray poetry award ($15,000) and the Premier's award ($10,000).

The awards are judged by 25 leading representatives of the South Australian literary community including academics, writers, publishers, booksellers and reviewers.
The 2008 Festival Awards for Literature will be announced at Adelaide Writers' Week in the East Tent on Sunday 2 March 2006 at 4.30pm.

Among the shortlisted titles are:

$15,000 award for children's literature (212 entries)

• Home (Narelle Oliver, Omnibus)
• Foundling: Monster Blood Tattoo Book 1 (D M Cornish, Omnibus)
• Don't Call Me Ishmael (Michael Gerard Bauer, Omnibus)
• Macbeth and Son (Jackie French, Angus & Robertson)
• Danny Allen Was Here (Phil Cummings, Pan Macmillan)
• The Worry Tree (Marianne Musgrove, Random House)

$15,000 award for fiction (147 entries)

• Sorry (Gail Jones, Vintage)
• Diary of a Bad Year (J M Coetzee, Text)
• El Dorado (Dorothy Porter, Picador)
• Carpentaria (Alexis Wright, Giramondo)
• The Ballad of Desmond Kale (Roger McDonald, Vintage)
• Orpheus Lost (Janette Turner Hospital, Fourth Estate)

$10,000 award for innovation (38 entries)

• Diary of a Bad Year (J M Coetzee, Text)
• Montale, a Biographical Anthology (John Watson, Puncher and Wattmann)
• Cube Root of Book (Paul Magee, John Leonard Press)
• Someone Else: Fictional Essays (John Hughes, Giramondo)

$15,000 award for nonfiction (125 entries)

• The Lamb Enters the Dreaming (Robert Kenny, Scribe)
• Sunrise West (Jacob G Rosenberg, Brandl & Schlesinger)
• Packer's Lunch (Neil Chenoweth, Allen & Unwin)
• The Content Makers (Margaret Simons, Penguin)
• The Vietnam Years: From the Jungle to the Australian Suburbs (Michael Caulfield, Hachette)
• Not Part of the Public: Non-Indigenous Policies and Practices and the Health of Indigenous South Australians, 1836-1973 (Judith Raftery, Wakefield Press)

$15,000 John Bray poetry award (90 entries)

• At the Flash and at the Baci (Ken Bolton, Wakefield Press)
• Esperance: New and Selected Poems (Caroline Caddy, Fremantle Press)
• Urban Myths: 210 Poems (News and Selected) (John Tranter, UQP)
• A Bud (Claire Gaskin, John Leonard Press)
• Not Finding Wittgenstein (J S Harry, Giramondo)
• Seriatim (Geoff Page, Salt)

For the full shortlist and more details on the awards, see the Arts SA website.
This article from Thorpe Bowker's Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker