Shortlists for 2014 ACT Writing and Publishing Awards announced

The shortlists for the 2014 ACT Writing and Publishing Awards have been announced.

The awards aim to ‘recognise, reward and promote writing by ACT region authors’ that has been published by a small publisher of no more than 15 employees or self-published. The awards are administered by the ACT Writers Centre and encompass fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children’s books.

There is no shortlist for the fiction category in 2014 and the winner will be announced at the awards night. The shortlisted titles in the other categories are:

Nonfiction

• Meat Pies and Mumbling Blokes: A Canberra Memoir (Margitta Acker, Ginninderra Press)
• Australian Eagles: Australians in the Battle of Britain (Kristen Alexander, Barrallier Books)
• 18 Days: Al Jazeera English and the Egyptian Revolution (Scott Bridges, Editia) 

Poetry

• The Petrov Poems (Lesley Lebkowicz, Pitt Street Poetry)
• Improving the News (Geoff Page, Pitt Street Poetry)
• Drag Down to Unlock or Place an Emergency Call (Melinda Smith, Pitt Street Poetry)
• Extravagance (Irene Wilkie, Ginninderra Press)  

Children’s books

• An Aussie Year (Tania McCartney, Exisle)
• The Very Sad Fish-lady (Joy McDonald, Sorley Boy)
• A Lion, a Whale and a Flea (Maree Teychenne, Starry Night Publishing).

The winners will be announced at the ACT Writers Centre Annual Awards Night on 16 December. The winners will each receive a $100 Paperchain Bookstore voucher and book stickers certifying their award.

The ACT Writers Centre also announced the shortlists for the annual Marjorie Graber-McInnis Short Story Award, the Michael Thwaites Poetry Award and the Anne Edgeworth Fellowship Award. They will also be presented at the awards night.

The Marjorie Graber-McInnis Short Story Award, worth $600, was established in 1997 to recognise unpublished short story writers. The shortlisted stories are:

• ‘Hookin In’ by Christine Kearney
• ‘The Loose Thread and the Sterile Needles’ by Cara Lennon
• ‘The Garden House’ by Alison O’Hara
• ‘A White Woman in Ojin’ by Ashley Thomson

The Michael Thwaites Poetry Award, worth $300, recognises unpublished poets. The shortlisted poems are:

• ‘Jack and Jill’ by Gregory A Gould
• ‘Stilettos’ by Robyn Lance
• ‘Calling Me In’ by Susan McGrath
• ‘Implausible Birds’ by Kavya Robinson

The Anne Edgeworth Fellowship, worth $5000, is presented to an emerging writer under 35 living in the ACT and working in the fields of poetry, fiction, screenwriting or playwriting. The shortlisted recipients are:

• Lisa Fuller
• Sarah Mason
• Zoya Patel
• Rosanna Stevens.

The winners of the Marjorie Graber-McInnis Short Story Award and Michael Thwaites Poetry Award, and up to three highly commended entries for each award, will be published in an issue of the ACT Writers Centre magazine ACTWrite.

To learn more about the ACT Writers Centre Awards, click here.

Tags: awards

Category: Local news