Brooks awarded Australia Council literature fellowship
Poet, novelist and essayist David Brooks has been awarded an Australia Council Fellowship for literature.
Brooks will use to the fellowship, worth $100,000 over two years, to ‘undertake research and development of a novel, Metamorphosis, exploring questions of social justice and historical guilt, the complex sociology of post-war migrant Australia, and how these issues are reflected in our relationships to and with animals’.
Brooks is co-editor of the journal Southerly and the author of numerous books, including the Miles Franklin shortlisted novel The Fern Tattoo (UQP, 2007). His latest collection of poetry, Open House, will be published by UQP in February 2015. Until recently Brooks was associate professor of Australian Literature and director of the graduate writing program at the University of Sydney.
Brooks was one of 12 artists to receive an Australia Council Fellowship. Other recipients were announced in the fields of dance, theatre, music, visual arts, emerging and experimental arts, and community arts and cultural development.
Jennifer Lyons-Reid, artistic director of Change Media, received a fellowship for community arts and cultural development, which she will use to ‘interrogate critical literacy strategies across the [Community Arts and Cultural Development] sector’.
Under the Australia Council’s new grants model, which begins in January 2015, fellowships will be offered once a year with a closing date in June. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Fellowships will be announced on 27 May 2015.
Australia Council CEO Tony Grybowski said in a statement that ‘fellowships are only granted once in an artist’s lifetime to those who can demonstrate outstanding achievement on the national and international stage’.
The Australia Council recently announced the successful applicants in its ‘new work’ grant categories.
For more information about the fellowships program, click here.
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