Congratulations to Gregory Day for the 2020 Patrick White Literary Award

Cameron’s is proud to congratulate Novelist Gregory Day, who has been named the winner of the $15,000 Patrick White Literary Award for 2020.

The annual award was established by Patrick White using the proceeds of his 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature, and is traditionally awarded to authors who ‘have made a significant but inadequately recognised contribution to Australian literature’. 

Day told the Sydney Morning Herald the award came as ‘a complete surprise’, and that he is pleased the award is given for a body of work.

‘My whole approach to my writing for the whole time has been about building a whole interrelated bunch of work,’ Day said. ‘I’ve had in my head a kind of Balzac idea, a whole suite of things that add up to some kind of portrait. Each of the books have to stand on their own but they’re very interdependent, particularly around place, of course.’

Day is the author of five novels, including his most recent, A Sand Archive (Picador), which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award.

Recent winners of the Patrick White Literary Award include Jordie Albiston, Samuel Wagan Watson (2018), Tony Birch (2017), Carmel Bird (2016), Joan London (2015) and Brian Castro (2014).