Age Book of the Year award (2009)

Steven Amsterdam's apocalyptic novel, Things We Didn't See Coming, won the A$20,000 (US$16,546) Age Book of the Year award, as well as the fiction category prize. Published by Sleepers, a small Melbourne house, the book was described by the judges as ''suspenseful and involving, it succeeds both as a compelling vision of the future and as a study of human resourcefulness and endurance," acocording to the Age. Guy Rundle won the $10,000 non-fiction prize for Down to the Crossroads, and Peter Porter won the $10,000 poetry prize for Better Than God.