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Saturday, May 18, 2013

Aurealis Awards 2012: A Link For You

Let's face it, Sean Wright does it better than I would in his post this morning, using Twitter posts, including one of mine, to describe Australian SF's answer to the Oscars, so I am going to link you to his web site, where he has done a very nice job of putting together some of the relevant tweets, with his own comments on them.

Amazing how quickly word gets around using Twitter. There was, a few years ago, that journalist who lost her job by saying the wrong thing on Twitter during another awards night, but the thing is, you don't have to be there or even wait for the newspaper or next day's blog posts to find out, if you're willing to wade through all those tweets which talk about what the tweep is wearing, who they're going to meet for drinks afterwards, complain that they can't get said drinks quickly enough and then report on how nice the stage looks and who has just got up to make a speech and what they're wearing. ;-) And you can see how nice the stage looks or who is there, because people snap photos.

As I am one of those who doesn't have the patience to wade through it all or wait, I went to bed and happily read through Sean's post, which you can find here. No surprises in the list of winners, though it doesn't mention which Graeme Base book won the children's picture book section ... A google shows it was Little Elephants, which I haven't read, having lost track of Graeme Base's books some time ago, must check it out. Ah, well, I can't say I'm surprised the veteran won this time, but I am disappointed that In The Beech Forest, illustrated by up and coming young artist Den Scheer, didn't make it - the review on this site, one of my more popular posts, tells you what I think of it. I can only say to the young lady, stick with it - Graeme Base's early book, Animalia, was on the CBCA shortlist,  and that didn't win either, but you know what? It's still in print, while the book that won is long forgotten. Not that I think anything by Graeme Base will ever be forgotten, but the thing is, he has also been where young Den is, and done just fine. And so will she. I firmly believe she is going to be the next Shaun Tan.

Congrats to the winners, but also anyone who made it to the list. Just getting there is special! And remember, I am a writer and, I think, a very good one, and I have never made it to the AA or the CBCA shortlist myself, so I am not just trying to be comforting. Heck, I am jealous of you for making it that far!(But I did make it to the Chronos shortlist, yay!)

 I don't envy the judges their job and I do urge everyone to read everything that was shortlisted, not just the winners. I am going to, not having had time to read them all as yet.

What do you think, anyone who has seen the list of winners? Would you have made the same decisions?

2 comments:

Sean Wright said...

Thanks for the link. Have been thinking about writing a short eBook on twitter coverage of your awards ceremony.

Sue Bursztynski said...

Sounds like a plan, Sean - and, BTW, Ebook Glue free version is now back up, though it's only for blog posts.