Losing Face shortlisted for the SPN Book of the Year Award 2023

Congratulations George Haddad, whose Losing Facehas been shortlisted for the SPN Book of the Year Award 2023. Honourable mention for this years' award also goes to Mykaela Saunders for This All Come Back Now.

Since 2012, the SPN has presented an annual award for the best book of the year published by a member of the Small Press Network. The award intends to 'highlight authorial and publishing excellence by small and independent publishers'. This years' judges include award-winning and critically acclaimed author Penni Russon; writer, literary critic and academic, Bec Kavanagh; Naarm based writer, Tierney Khan.

Their report for Losing Face:

For a novel about violence, Losing Face is surprisingly tender. George Haddad is a writer with a talent for voice and place, vividly capturing the intensity of Western Sydney. Haddad uses layered intergenerational storytelling to demonstrate the complexity with which lives intertwine and unravel around a violent crime. He avoids delivering neat and easy answers but instead lingers in places that we usually want to look away from. But we don’t look away; Haddad has achieved a page-turning urgency that makes this a compelling reading experience.

George shares the shortlist with Against Disappearance: Essays on memory (ed by Leah Jing Mcintosh & Adolfo Aranjuez, Liminal/Pantera), The Branded (Jo Riccioni, Pantera), Mabu Mabu (Nornie Bero, Hardie Grant), Our Members Be Unlimited (Sam Wallman, Scribe) and Paradise (point of Transmission) (Andrew Sutherland, Fremantle Press). An additional honourable mention goes to Lockdown (Chip Le Grand, Monash).

The winner will be announced at an event as part of the SPN Independent Publishing Conference on 24 November.