Geraldton author Charmaine Papertalk-Green wins literary accolade

Geraldton author Charmaine Papertalk-Green is overall winner in one of Australia’s oldest and most prestigious literary awards. According to the organisers the ALS Gold Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year. Papertalk-Green won the medal for her book Nganajungu Yagu, which she wrote in response to a collection of letters from her mother she had kept for 41 years. “She was an Aboriginal woman sitting in Mullewa who only did schooling to the age 12 writing these really beautiful letters,” she said. “She was telling me about life in Mullewa and encouraging me to just keep on my path.” The Medal was inaugurated by the Australian Literature Society, which was founded in Melbourne in 1899 and incorporated into the Association for the Study of Australian Literature in 1982. Papertalk-Green was one of 12 authors nominated for the Medal, and one of five short listed. Last year she won the prestigious Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2020 poetry category for the same book. “I am proud to be adding to the growing works of Western Australian Aboriginal writers and storytellers but also more importantly to the small body of work in the Yamaji literature field,” she said.