The shortlist for this year’s Colin Roderick Award and H T Priestley Memorial Medal, administered by the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies at James Cook University, has been announced. The shortlisted titles are:

• Carrying the World (Maxine Beneba Clarke, Hachette)
• Wisdom Tree: Five Novellas (Nick Earls, Inkerman & Blunt)
• Offshore: Behind the Wire on Manus and Nauru (Madeline Gleeson, NewSouth)
• The Art of Time Travel: Historians and their Craft (Tom Griffiths, Black Inc.)
• From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories (Mark McKenna, MUP)
• Salt Water: An Epic Fight for Justice in the Tropics (Cathy McLennan, UQP)
• The Rules of Backyard Cricket (Jock Serong, Text)
• Extinctions (Josephine Wilson, UWA Publishing).

The award and medal are presented to the title the judges determine is ‘the best book that is published in Australia in the previous calendar year, which deals with any aspect of Australian life’. The winner will be announced in Townsville on 30 October. For more information, visit the website here.