It's exciting when the quality of a book's writing is matched by its appearance. At the Australian Book Design Awards, Laura Thomas' work on Hot Little Hands by Abigail Ulman won the awards for best designed literary fiction book and designers' choice cover of the year. Ulman's collection of short stories about young women discovering life, sex and danger was one of my favourite 2015 books and we announced her last week as one of the Herald's Best Young Australian Novelists. Hot Little Hands could have been treated with a conventional image of a girl, but Thomas avoided cliches. As an in-house designer for Penguin (recently moved to Scribe), she says the brief was simply "bright, bold, fun, sexy, hipster – but not too much". She went through many concepts, such as playful images of hands, struggling to sum up the different stories. "Some of the feedback I got was 'it can't be Brunswick Street hipster, it's got to be San Francisco hipster'." So she ended up with this bold graphic design, altering a Mikhail Bukhavets font she found online and working with Ulman's input on the look and colours (less pink!). Thomas won two design awards last year, for the illustrated book, The Making of MONA, and for the commercial novel, What Came Before by Anna George, in which she dramatically changed a photo of a woman's face by adding a violent slash of lipstick. See all the winners at abda.com.au.

Ulman and Murray Middleton (When There's Nowhere Else to Run) will be in conversation with me and fellow judge Maxine Beneba Clarke on Saturday, May 21, at 11.30am in Sydney Dance 2 at the main Walsh Bay venue. Entry is free, so just turn up.

Laughter and tears

There were many astonishing moments at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards at the State Library of NSW on Monday. Premier Mike Baird, presenting his awards, was clearly moved by the passion and stories of an unusually diverse line-up of writers. Wesley Enoch, the Sydney Festival director, spoke in his opening address of his complex Indigenous-European family and the importance of stories. Osamah Sami, winner of the multicultural award for Good Muslim Boy, gave a hilarious – and endless – speech, after warning that's what happens when you give an Arab a microphone. Magda Szubanski, non-fiction winner for Reckoning, got Baird to hold up her phone so her mother could hear her acceptance speech; leaving the stage she promised to spend her prize money on trees (a reference to historic fig trees removed for construction of light rail in Randwick. Philippines-born Merlinda Bobis, fiction winner for Locust Girl, sang to the audience. Bruce Pascoe and Ellen van Neerven shared a new Indigenous writer's prize and he went on to win book of the year, saying he will use the prize money to publish two new issues of Australian Short Stories, the magazine he edited for 16 years until 1998. Children's winner Rebecca Young spoke of her family's inspiration for Teacup, a picturebook (illustrated by co-winner Matt Ottley) about a boy who has to leave home in a boat. And Rosie Scott, despite being unwell, appeared with her daughter Bella Vendramini to receive a Special Award for her lifetime contribution to literature as an author, mentor and activist. Congratulations to the winners, finalists and judges for showing Australian writing at its best in challenging times.

A visit from Grenville

An online auction is raising funds for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, leading to Kick On, a fundraising evening in Brisbane on May 27. You can bid now for items including a framed Michael Leunig drawing, a book club visit from Kate Grenville, a Swans guernsey signed by Adam Goodes and Michael O'Loughlin, a private dinner with the stars of the ABC's Black Comedy series, character-naming rights in Anita Heiss' next novel. Heiss is a hard-working ambassador for the ILF and hopes to raise $20,000 to provide books to remote Indigenous communities where reading changes lives.