Lenora Thaker has won the top prize at Queensland's literary awards for her debut novel "The Pearl of Tagai Town," which draws on her family's history in a segregated shantytown. The Queensland premier's award comes with a $30,000 prize and recognises the work as "a work of state significance."
Thaker, who is the author of "Meriam and Wagedagam," wrote the historical novel based on her ancestors' lives in Cairns-Malay Town. This unmapped settlement housed Indigenous Australians, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Malaysian and Sri Lankan residents who had been segregated from the white population. The town existed from the late 1800s until the late 1950s.
Awards judges described the novel as "stunning" and "unambiguously and distinctively Queensland." The award recognises fiction that holds particular significance to the state's cultural history.