City of Fremantle Hungerford Award 2022 shortlist announced

The shortlist for the 2022 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award has been announced.

The shortlisted manuscripts are:

• ‘The Slow Patience of the Sea & other stories’, a collection of short stories by Joy Kilian-Essert
• ‘Tell Me a Story’, a memoir by Gerard McCann
• ‘Kintsugi’, a collection of narrative nonfiction essays by Marie O’Rourke
• ‘Salt River Road’, a novel by Molly Schmidt.

This year’s award was judged by authors Rashida Murphy and Richard Rossiter, Hungerford-winner Natasha Lester, and Fremantle Press publisher Georgia Richter. The judges selected the shortlist from 90 manuscripts.

Richter said ‘though each manuscript on the shortlist is distinct in form and content, they are all engaging, skilfully written stories which hold the reader’s attention’.

The winner, to be announced on Thursday, 20 October, will receive $15,000 in prize money and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press.

The City of Fremantle Hungerford Award is presented biennially to a full-length manuscript of fiction or narrative nonfiction by a Western Australian author previously unpublished in book form.

Marias Papas was the 2020 winner for her novel Skimming Stones (submitted as ‘I Belong to the Lake’) which was published by Fremantle Press in 2021. For more information on the award, see the Fremantle Press website.

Pictured: (Top L–R) Joy Kilian-Essert, Gerard McCann; (Bottom L–R) Marie O’Rourke, Molly Schmidt

Category: Awards Local news