New sponsors boost prize money for Queensland Literary Awards
The winners in each category of the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards (QLA) will receive a cash prize of $5000, up from $1000 in 2012, thanks to support from new sponsors this year.
Entries are now open for the 2013 awards, which will include 11 awards categories, down from 15 in 2012. This year, the Science Writer Award and the Harry Williams Award for a literary or media work advancing public debate have been combined with the Nonfiction Award. The awards will also only present one award for scriptwriting, for a feature film script. The awards previously included prizes for television and stage scriptwriting.
Among the new sponsors for this year’s awards are: financial services company Deloitte, which will sponsor the fiction category; legal firm Gadens, which will sponsor the Feature Film Script Award; the University of Queensland, which will sponsor the Nonfiction Book Award; the University of Southern Queensland, which will sponsor the History Book Award; the State Library of Queensland, which will sponsor the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a poetry collection; and Griffith University, which will sponsor the Young Adult Book Award.
The Courier-Mail will sponsor the People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award again this year, while the University of Queensland Press (UQP) will again support the David Unaipon Award for an unpublished Indigenous writer and the Emerging Queensland Author Manuscript Award. The Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, which provided $20,000 in funding for last year’s awards, will support the David Unaipon Award this year.
QLA manager Claire Booth told Books+Publishing that the support from the Copyright Agency and UQP will also allow the QLA to offer mentorships for each of the writers shortlisted for the David Unaipon and the Emerging Queensland Author Manuscript Awards for the first time this year.
The Steele Rudd Award for an Australian short story collection and the Children’s Book Award will be presented this year, although these two categories do not have individual sponsors.
As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the QLA will also offer three fellowships this year as a result of a new funding agreement with the Queensland Government. The government will fund three fellowships for Queensland writers, worth $15,000 each, and will provide an additional $17,000 for administrative costs.
For more information about the Queensland Literary Awards, visit the website here. To see a list of the winners of last year’s awards, click here.
Category: Local news
