Anna Funder: Attack of the award winner

Pollies Beware

The recently anointed Miles Franklin award winner, Anna Funder, has taken aim at Queensland’s premier.

Anna Funder only recently won, but the latest Miles Franklin literary award winner has spared no moment in attacking the Queensland Premier.

It all has to do with the recent scrapping of the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards by the new state leader, Campbell Newman.

"I don't really think they are the Premier's to scrap. It's the people's money and the people want to have this recognition of the writers who reflect their world back to them," she recently told ABC radio. "I have spent my professional life studying totalitarian regimes and the brave people who speak out against them. And the first thing that someone with dictatorial inclinations does is to silence the writers and the journalists."

Anna, who won for her debut novel All That I Am, was not present at the awards, which happened last night in Queensland. She lives in New York, and is currently on a book tour in England.

However, in a pre-recorded speech the author said she was "hugely honoured and grateful more than I can say."

"Like any big prize, at some level there is no way you can deserve such luck."

She also used the speech to presage her radio offensive, saying "abolishing writers' awards is a cost cutting measure, but also a step towards the unscrutinised exercise of power."

She beat out four other authors for the prize: Tony Birch for Blood, Gillian Mears for Foal's Bread, Frank Moorhouse for Cold Light and Favel Parrett for Past the Shallows.

Anna’s novel, which follows the lives of Germans opposing Nazi Germany, has already picked up a number of prizes: Book of the Year and Literary Fiction Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards, the 2012 Barbara Jefferis Award, the Independent Bookseller’s Award for Best Debut Fiction, and the Indie Book of the Year.