My mum comes from the Winning family, a rather unlikely Scottish surname ripe for puns. I think it might be too much pressure to have as a surname. My beloved grandad, Ian Winning, never won much. But I was winning last night. I am thrilled to have won the WA Premier’s Prize for Book of the Year for The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard.

I dislike uncertainty and I was anxious in the days before the announcement. Like Josh Kemp, winner of the Emerging category said, he survived by convincing himself he hadn’t won. And I feel bad for all the other shortlistees who didn’t win – it’s a hard thing to endure. So many great books, including many which weren’t shortlisted. But I was so pleased for Tracy Ryan, who won the Writer’s Fellowship category. She is a friend of many years, and a talented, hard-working, underrecognised novelist and poet who has dedicated her life to writing and produced innnovative books every year or two, one after the other.

Here is the speech I wrote for the ceremony, which I delivered a little differently on the night:

Right through Katharine Susannah Prichard’s career as she lived through two world wars, a Depression and a cold war, she felt an unresolvable tension between wanting to address the urgent crises of the time and wanting to take time to write. As a biographer, I sometimes find it hard to justify my enthusiasm for past lives given the urgent times we live in. In the face of climate change, climate activism is being criminalised while big polluters greenwash us. And we are sleepwalking into the long-term effects of repeated covid infections. But still I can’t let go of the past, and remembering the stories of our ancestors who walked the same streets we now walk. I am so glad we have a premier who reads and who cares about books and literature. I am glad of the State Library’s existence. It is such an important place to collect and remember our stories and it should have more funding!

It’s not easy being a writer. It was fourteen years [sic – eighteen] between my first published book and my second published book and I felt I was wandering through a desert that I might never come out of. It means so much to receive this recognition. I acknowledge the other wonderful books which were shortlisted and entered for this year’s prize. I thank my publisher, Melbourne University Publishing, for producing a beautiful book true to my hopes and dreams for it. I had such a myriad of people walking alongside me at different points of the journey. I can’t mention them all now, but they include Tony Hughes D’Aeth, Van Ikin, and the good people at the KSP Writers’ Centre, who have been keeping the legend of Katharine alive for decades.

My wife Nicole has been there the whole way, a true believer in me and this story. Our children, Thomas and Sarah, were both born in the many years I was working on The Red Witch and I’m so glad that they love books and could be here with us tonight. Thank you everyone!

A thank you I forgot in my speech: Writing WA, sponsor of the prize! Given all my handwringing, I’m so glad the prize was sponsored (if we have to have sponsors) by that splendid organisation.

The speech bears some traces of the wrestling I was doing with participation in an award in the name of the premier. When I was nominated, Mark McGowan was premier. Was I tacitly endorsing his agenda? McGowan has always shown hostility to climate activists. Protest has been increasingly criminalised in Australia, and here in Perth, the police have come down heavily on anyone challenging the big polluters – dawn raids, punitive charges, restrictive bail. They are trying to crush resistance. Oil, gas and iron ore rule our state and their interests are what the police protect. Meanwhile, our planet is in great peril. Much more ambitious action is required to save us from the worst effects. The activists are the prophets warning us; they’re on the side of truth.

And then there’s covid. McGowan made a good start for the first two years, but now we’re left with no mitigations. I’ve been keeping up with the scientists’ findings and it is clear the effects of covid are far more serious than the public realises: increases in heart attacks, diabetes, and strokes, the debilitating effects of long covid – and death. I feel I’m living in an alternative reality and no-one can hear me scream.

Could I say something or do something that would make a difference? A line from Hans Koning’s The Revolutionary sticks in my head sometimes: ‘And then he began wondering if he himself had the nerve; if he wanted it; if it were really necessary in life to do the hardest thing.’ But maybe sometimes in life it is not necessary to do the hardest thing but to appreciate good things when they come. Participating in the premier’s awards does not mean you agree with everything a particular premier is doing. It’s only showing a mark of esteem to the awards, that they’re endorsed by the state leader. Literature and the State Library are underfunded in our state and I’ve felt the Premier’s Book Awards are a fragile thing, after seeing them scaled right back over the years. And then, miraculously, the premier changed anyway. Perhaps not much will be different but Roger Cook is not hostile to activists and I think at heart he has good intentions.

I’ve spent this wintry day trying to keep up with all the lovely messages of congratulations. I’m basking in the love. It feels like my book has been given a second lease of life, just as it was winding down to the twilight existence of books whose brief day of attention has finished. I wrote a little melancholily at the beginning of May about the highs and lows of publishing the Red Witch, lamenting that it seemed I’d missed out on shortlistings. Contradicting me, just a couple of days later came news of the shortlisting. It’s all rather unexpected, a fairy-tale ending for me.

• If you don’t have the book yet, you can buy signed copies directly from me – with free postage for the first seven orders: https://nathanhobby.square.site/s/shop . Here’s my pitch: it’s a highly readable story of a spirited woman who lived through great tragedy while forging a career as a novelist of the Australian back-blocks and remaining misguidedly loyal to the communism of the Soviet Union.