Dorothy Hewett Award 2024 shortlist announced

UWA Publishing has announced the shortlist for the 2024 Dorothy Hewett Award for an unpublished manuscript.

The shortlisted manuscripts, chosen from over 200 entries, are:

• ‘The Protector of Fledglings’ by Angella Whitton, NSW, about Frances, a socially withdrawn librarian who sees her brother in the park one afternoon—only her brother had died when he was a child. ‘Reminiscent of a number of recent Japanese novels, the world of Frances is both haunted and humorous. A tender story of mystery and self-discovery.’
• ‘Vanishment’ by Jeremy Tager, QLD, ‘a novel of ecology and the environment, and also of surprises’ that ‘deftly weaves unexpected viewpoints not often seen in Australian literature, and questions the structures of our lives, including academia and the act of whistleblowing’
• ‘Past and Parallel Lives’ by Kaya Ortiz, WA, ‘a poetic offering that thrums in liminal spaces … about the migratory experience, the queer body, the unfixed, confused identity carving a space in the world … borrowed languages, (un)belonging, and attempts of navigating treacherous cultural and racial expectations with courage and grace’
• ‘The Lost House’ by Kimberley Lipschus, NSW, ‘an epic novel unfolds with the uncanny precision of a fairytale’ in which Olivia falls into a dam and is rushed to hospital in a coma—yet in another dimension, Olivia meets Jack, a boy living on his own in an abandoned house by a waterhole in ‘a spellbinding story of arrested life’
• ‘The Fear of Empty Spaces’ by Rachel Bowman, QLD, ‘a haunting historical novel … set in the station country of the east Murchison (Yamatji Country) in the 1930s and 40s’, the story of a missing woman that ‘evokes the hopes and sensibilities, as well as the prejudices and silences, of this era’
• ‘My Heart Is a Plastic Shoe’ by Rhian Healy, WA, ‘a collection of poetry that explores the beauty, tenacity and wilfulness of Mother Earth and her bounties’ and ‘sensitively captures the moods and impulses of humans and other living specimens’.

Judges Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Astrid Edwards, Thuy On and Kate Pickard said bringing the numbers down to a shortlist was ‘a difficult and at times contentious exercise, but we are confident the six proffered here are a sterling representation of all that is good in Australian literature today’.

First awarded in 2017, the Dorothy Hewett Award is open to Australian writers across the categories of fiction, narrative nonfiction and poetry. The 2024 winner—who will receive $10,000 courtesy of the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, as well as a publishing contract with UWA Publishing—will be announced in June.

The 2023 winner of the award was Kirsty Iltners for Depth of Field, published earlier this month.

Category: Awards Local news