black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship 2016 winners announced

The 2016 black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship has been awarded to WA writer Claire Coleman and SA writer Dylan Coleman.

Each fellowship is worth $10,000 and includes editorial development from the State Library of Queensland’s (SLQ) black&write! editorial team, and consideration for publication by Hachette Australia. As previously reported by Books+Publishing, SLQ partnered with Hachette on the fellowship in January following a five-year partnership with Magabala Books.

Claire Coleman’s novel ‘Terra Nullius’ is ‘historical fiction set in southern Western Australia … exploring the realities of Aboriginal lives and a cry for understanding with a sci-fi twist’.

Dylan Coleman’s ‘Clear Water White Death’ is ‘a tribute to Coleman’s father’, which centres on ‘a Greek-Aboriginal family living on the far west coast of South Australia’ and ‘touches on the complex stages of loss, grief and mental illness which affect family and community’.

The black&write! judges also awarded four highly commended entries in the 2016 competition to:

• Jeanine Leane (ACT) for ‘Piece of Australia’
• Waverley Stanley Jnr (Qld) for ‘The Adventures of Waverley Stanley Jnr’s Life’
• Boyd Quakawoot (Qld) for ‘The Song of Jessica Perkins’
• Ashleigh Johnstone (NSW) for ‘Descend’.

Now in its sixth year, black&write! fellowship is designed to ‘train, mentor and promote outstanding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and editors and encourage a love of reading, writing and ideas in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities’.

Entries for the 2016 fellowship opens later this year. More information is available here.

Category: Local news