Queensland literary awards: ‘stunning’ debut inspired by segregated shantytown wins top prize

Lenora Thaker wins $30,000 prize for ‘a work of state significance’ for The Pearl of Tagai Town, which draws on her family’s history in Cairns-Malay Town

A “stunning” debut novel described as “unambiguously and distinctively Queensland” has won the $30,000 top prize at the Queensland literary awards (QLAs).

Meriam and Wagedagam author Lenora Thaker won the Queensland premier’s award for a work of state significance for her historical novel The Pearl of Tagai Town, which was inspired by her ancestors’ lives in an unmapped shantytown known as Cairns-Malay Town. The town once housed Indigenous Australians, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Malaysian and Sri Lankan residents who had been segregated from the white population; it existed from the late 1800s until the late 1950s.