Can the Prime Minister's Literary Awards fight back from last year's shemozzle? Tony Abbott and Arts Minister George Brandis sent out an oddly timed press release on Christmas Eve inviting entries for the 2015 awards (closing date February 28). This suggests an intention to announce the winners of the $600,000 prizemoney before year's end. The 2014 presentation dinner in December, four months after judging ended, had a low-priority feeling. And despite divisions on two judging panels (and Abbott's heavy-handed intervention) that resulted in joint winners of the fiction and history awards, most judges are willing to step up again, though they have not had formal confirmation. History/non-fiction chair Gerard Henderson and Peter Coleman, Ross Fitzgerald and Ida Lichter have agreed to return. The fifth judge, historian Ann Moyal, told Undercover last year she would not judge again because the others had worked "as a team" and insisted on including Hal G.P. Colebatch's "poorly constructed and poorly written" Australia's Secret War as history co-winner with Joan Beaumont's Broken Nation. Moyal confirmed this week, "I am not staying on and nothing would induce me to"; she hopes a younger historian will replace her. Louise Adler is expected to chair the fiction/poetry panel again with Margie Bryant, Jamie Grant, Robert Gray and Les Murray. Last year the three men, all poets, backed Steven Carroll's A World of Other People as the panel's recommended winner, and were outraged when Abbott named Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North as co-winner. Rather than resigning, however, says Grant, they have decided to stay on if not "dismissed for our failings as judges", rather than "concede power to somebody who values politics above literary excellence".

SHORTLISTED AUTHORS SHORT-CHANGED

Canberra resident Mark Henshaw (pictured) is the author of The Snow Kimono, one of six novels and 21 works shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, to be announced in Melbourne on January 28. When Henshaw received the standard invitation to the event hosted by the Wheeler Centre, he wrote back that he was chuffed to be shortlisted for "one of the premier cultural awards in Australia" and went on: "But here's the rub. I'm a writer ... I'm broke – I simply do not have the wherewithal to fly down to Melbourne ... on the off-chance that my work might win." He suggested the Victorian government divert some of the money it spends on events such as the formula one to bring all shortlisted authors to Melbourne. Urged by the organisers to attend because "the event is a celebration of all the shortlisted writers and their work", Henshaw got a little more heated about "this culturally condescending myopic view of what the arts really means in Australia". He declined Text Publishing's offer to fly him down, saying they had spent enough on him already. Henshaw has a point: awards gain publicity and atmosphere from the finalists' presence. The NSW Premier's Literary Awards pay $500 towards travel for regional and interstate finalists, the Prime Minister's Literary Awards pay for all travel, and the Miles Franklin Literary Award decides each case individually.

PROFITS OF DOOM

The controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq could not have a more timely novel than Soumission, set in France in 2022 when an Islamic president is elected, women are veiled and schools teach an Islamic curriculum. Soumission sold more than 100,000 copies in a week after its publication on January 7, the day 12 people were murdered in the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Heinemann will publish Submission, the English translation, in Britain and Australia in September.