The Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award is Waverley Council’s annual celebration of the best in Australian research-based literature. Nominations are invited from April each year and are judged on literary merit, quality research, readability and value to the community.
Waverley Council is delighted to announce that acclaimed historian and essayist Martin Thomas has been awarded the 2025 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award for his book
Clever Men (Allen & Unwin).
Judge Julia Carlomagno said, “Martin Thomas’s Clever Men – which details Charles Mountford’s contentious expedition to Arnhem Land in 1948 in its true complexity – is a poignant examination of the collision between Western scientific hubris and Indigenous knowledges. Almost 20 years in the making, it draws on oral testimony as well as archival resources and is based on close collaboration with the communities it features. It is exemplary historical scholarship and a cracking read. It tells a story of national significance and deserves to be widely read and absorbed.”