Judge Dread: how to be semi-sensible as an author about literary awards

A child’s eye

At convent school, yearly exams were the norm from age seven. Our results in every subject were pinned to the classroom wall in rank order. The nuns’ philosophy was clear: they liked the students who regularly made the top five, tolerated the middle bunch and gave up on the rest. I was usually in the top five squad, but all I remember about that was the anxiety; my introduction to the notion of achievement.

At the final assembly of primary school, a few students were awarded cups and shields from a cabinet we’d spent years passing by with the same reverence we showed for the altar in chapel. I won the shield for French, the cup for History, and for English a consolation clay pig, bought especially for me. The head nun explained to the assembled students and parents that because I’d scooped the English cup the previous year, it wasn’t fair for me to win again. Hence, the little pig. 

As I walked up to the front to accept the pig from this nun I was so terrified of, I was pink-faced and ashamed. When I took my seat again I couldn’t look at anyone. Why a pig? I thought. I loved English more than anything, but the way the headmistress announced this consolation prize worked its way under my skin like a splinter. “It would be greedy for Emily to win,” she’d told the room in her arch tone. It was probably a well-meant gesture but I wished I’d never been mentioned that day, because I didn’t hear “you’re good at English”, I heard: “you’re greedy, like a pig”.

That consolation pig was the last prize I’d win for nearly forty years.

Sonya Hartnett on judging

The first time I considered that awards were not a straightforward acknowledgement of “the best” was during my first year of living in Australia, 2008. I was in the audience of a small writers’ festival listening to a panel that included Sonya Hartnett. I was very taken by her. She’d just won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for literature, the world’s richest children’s book award.

Two things Sonya said about awards I’ve never forgotten. The first is that she was on the verge of giving up full-time writing and taking a job in a bookshop when she got the call to say she’d won the Astrid Lindgren award. She thought the call was a joke at first. The second thing is that while she gratefully accepted that award, her view of awards had come from judging them, not from winning them. And this was Sonya’s description of judging awards (or my rough interpretation of what she said, many years later): you read the books, you love this one and this one, you hate this one and this one, and you tolerate these ones; then you enter a room with the other judges and find that no one has the same opinion as you at all, so you thrash it out for hours and hours until finally you end up with a winner that everyone can agree on.

Agreeing on was not the same as this is the best book, she clarified. With a different collection of judges, the winner would likely be different.

Clueless in Melbourne

My debut novel came out in Australia the following year with no fanfare. It was really a UK novel, so when Australian awards came and went, I didn’t expect to be on them, and I wasn’t. I didn’t know what the CBCA awards were, or a Vic Prem, or an Ethel Turner, an Indie, a Yabba, etcetera etcetera. I was just a confused pom.

By the time my first Australian novel came out, I’d been on a crash course by getting a job as a book buyer. I’d worked hard to get to know the Australian children’s book industry, fast-tracked from having no clue what a Bottersnike was to being called on to host panels. Still, my expectations for that novel were low — which was lucky, because it bombed. Truly, I was so tired from working full-time, juggling the kids and trying to keep writing that I didn’t have it in me to dwell on being overlooked. I wasn’t getting a CBCA, or any other award listing, but I also thought: why should I? 

There was one tricky day. I was bookselling at a YA festival when one of the coordinators handed me the embargoed longlist for a coveted award. My job was to hurry back to the bookshop to get as much of the stock as we had and sell it once the award was announced in a couple of hours. My own novel had been entered and hadn’t made the longlist. I loved being a bookseller, but it struck me then that I was not good enough to hang out with the real writers at the festival, just good enough to sell their books.

I become Judgey McJudgerson

I kept writing, kept bookselling, and the more I became entangled in the industry the harder it was to remain sensible about awards. It was a surprise when I was first asked to judge one. A huge crate of YA was delivered to my flat — I’d read quite a few of them already and was excited about the process of reading the rest and awarding some brilliant work a shiny sticker and a significant wad of money.

The panel of three had a set of criteria, and we were all committed and experienced YA readers. But as I left the first of several judges’ meetings, Sonya Hartnett’s words came back to me — we were already in disagreement about several books. Some books I loved had been dismissed without much debate, and I felt I’d failed the books by not being able to convince the other two. Other books I was less keen on were still in the mix, as well as many I hadn’t yet read. I felt like I was on a mission to believe in the winner — for the process to be less cynical than Sonya Hartnett had described.

In the end, all three judges were passionate about the winner — we all genuinely loved the book and thought it added something unique to the pot. But it was interesting to witness how other books I’d loved were never going to make it with that set of judges; the luck element you hear so much about in the book industry. The trick was now to remember that luck element every time a novel of mine didn’t make a list — which would be a lot, as it turned out.

I also remembered it when I finally won.

I should be so lucky.

I won a book award last year. (2023)

When I got the call, all the not-winning I’d been building up for forty years was released in a burst of ugly crying. Bless. Even though I’d always felt grateful for my career, there was one important Australian children’s book award, the CBCA, whose longlist had always eluded me, and as my knowledge of the industry grew I’d begun to think of that as a bad look for my career, not to mention a terrible feeling of rejection — but winning a different award made that disappear.

I also kept having to tell myself: don’t just feel relieved, enjoy this award. This might be your one and only time. You owe it to your good fortune to feel happy.

Semi-Sensible Thoughts for Semi-Sensible People

• The set of judges is everything. This set will love you, this set won’t. You can’t control that, much less write towards it.

• Enjoy it when it happens. You must. Even though you know awards are imperfect and that luck is involved.

• Don’t do anything that might stop someone else from enjoying their turn to have their work acknowledged. Even if you feel snubbed. This is why we especially need to cultivate trusted writer friends who commiserate with us during those crushing lows.

• The book industry isn’t diverse enough at any level and some writers are overlooked in awards because of biased systems: that’s a different story, and worth analysing, challenging and making noise about.

Judging Hat On Again

I’m deep into judging an award I’ve never judged before. It’s intense. Each judge has been assigned 50 books in the first instance. Each book gets two judges before the first round of discussions. After that there will be more books for us all to read. It’s a huge, unpaid job. The judges are all keen but I’ll admit to feeling daunted — I’m processing all kinds of thoughts as I’m testing each book against the criteria, such as: how would I read this book if I didn’t have 49 more books to read and a time limit? How would I read this book if I hadn’t just read the one before it? Am I being fair? Am I alone in thinking this or that?

It’s interesting, and sobering, and again it makes me feel like the only way of surviving award season as a writer is to know that this is how it is: imperfect, reliant on fortune.

The only thing that really matters is that you go and write, not for an award but because that’s what you love doing.

And if you win a little brown pig, you’re allowed to enjoy that, too.