Winner

2022 PENGUIN LITERARY PRIZE

Told from five different points of view, each one revealing something different, On a Bright Hillside in Paradise, tells the story of a family of convict descendants in the back-blocks of Tasmania, on a farm in a place called Paradise. They lead hard-scrabble lives. The drama begins when strangers arrive, Christian Brethren evangelists who hold big revival meetings in local barns.

“On A Bright Hillside in Paradise is a jewel of a novel: luminous, vivid, and deftly shaped. Annette Higgs has a special capacity for drawing us into the rhythms of the Hatton family’s labours and devotions, so that we care and hope and grieve alongside them. I felt, as I read, that there was ordinary time, and there was Paradise time, and that I could have stayed forever on that bright hillside.”—Fiona McFarlane

Meet Annette

Annette is a writer living in Sydney, Australia. She was born and grew up in Tasmania, leaving on her 18th birthday to study literature and law at the Australian National University in Canberra. She has lived, worked and studied in Sydney, London and Italy, and holds a Masters in Creative Writing and a Doctorate of Arts from the University of Sydney.

A Pushcart nominee, her short work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies in Australia, the USA, the UK and India. Her novel On a Bright Hillside in Paradise won the 2022 Penguin Literary Prize and was published by Penguin in 2023.