INDIE BOOK AWARDS 2015 WINNERS ANNOUNCED

Tonight, Wednesday 25 March, at a special event in Sydney's CBD, the Indie Book Awards Category Winners and the Indie Book of the Year were announced.

2015 Indie Book Awards Category winners are: Indie Book of the Year Fiction winner: Golden Boys by Sonya Hartnett (Penguin Random House Australia) Indie Book of the Year Non-Fiction winner: The Bush by Don Watson (Penguin Random House Australia) Indie Book of the Year Children's & YA winner: Withering-by-Sea by Judith Rossell (ABC Books, HarperCollins Publishers Australia) Indie Book of the Year Debut Fiction winner: Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke (Hachette Australia) And the 2015 Indie Book Award overall winner therefore the Indie Book of the Year is: The Bush: Travels in the Heart of Australia by Don Watson (Penguin Random House Australia).

Don Watson says: 'I am delighted. How could I not be? Like every other writer in Australia, I regularly give thanks for our independent booksellers, and I would go down on my knees to do so if I thought it would help them to thrive. Writers and readers and publishers, suburbs, towns and communities, from toddlers to old age pensioners the whole country is blessed by them. They have fought off the monopolising tendencies of capitalism, the Internet, mobile phones, and ipads; they have defied the general trend to instant gratification, fads, fashion and ignorance itself. In little shops all over the continent they keep the book - and many hearts and minds - alive. I can imagine no greater honour for an Australian writer than these Indie awards they have bestowed on The Bush. So I thank them - even more deeply this week than last' Don Watson will be interviewed about his win and his work on ABC Radio National Arts and Books daily on Tuesday 31 March at 10am.

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