Poet Ali Cobby Eckermann has taken out the book of the year prize in the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards for her work She is the Earth, a verse novel. It’s the second time she has won book of the year, winning for the first time in 2013 for another verse novel, Ruby Moonlight. Eckermann is also the winner of the Indigenous writer’s prize, for which she will receive $30,000, with an additional $10,000 for the book of the year award.

Established in 1979, the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards were presented at the NSW State Library on Monday night, kicking off the Sydney Writers’ Festival . Author Ali Cobby Eckermann. The Yankunytjatjara poet described She is the Earth as “the poetry song book that arises when you walk Country and you know your ancestors are holding your hand”.

“For me, that’s how I imagine the process of writing She is the Earth ,” she told this masthead, describing it as a verse novel in which, “every page is a poem, and it reads like a story”. Eckermann was not published until her mid-30s, even though as a young child she knew she wanted to be a writer. She recalls trying very hard to be a good student but always ending up in trouble.

“The constraints of curriculum squashed that and so, what a blessing to get this opportunity to do this again as a grandmother,” Eckermann says. Her mother was born at Ooldea soakage on the Nullarbor Plain and her grandmother was born at Indulkana in the far north of South Australia. All three generati.