Inaugural Editia Prize winner announced

Monday, 29 July 2013 Books+Publishing

The inaugural Editia Prize has been awarded to Minyma by former social worker and freelance writer Carly Lorente.

Lorente will receive a $2500 advance on royalties, with Minyma to be edited and published by Editia. The work will be available later this year as an ebook and via print-on-demand.

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the Editia Prize was launched by independent digital publisher Editia in 2012. The prize recognises unpublished longform journalism and creative nonfiction between 10,000 and 35,000 words. This year’s prize was judged by Editia founder and publisher Charlotte Harper, author and broadcaster Jane Caro, former editor of the Australian and the Sunday Age Malcolm Schmidtke and University of Canberra professor of journalism Matthew Ricketson.

Minyma, which is based on Lorente’s experiences while working for an Indigenous women’s council in Central Australia during 2010, was selected from a shortlist of three titles. Also shortlisted for the prize were Ephemera Revisited by Anna Soter, an essay about the exposure of asbestos to new immigrants to Western Australia, and Beyond Biosphere by Frankie Seymour, an essay about the damage caused by humans to the global ecosystem.

Judge Jane Caro described Minyma as ‘vivid, and very assured.’ ‘I could hear those women’s voices. I could smell the campfire. I could see them eating the goanna … I was there, I was living it,’ said Caro.

Harper launched Editia in August 2012 with Crowdfund it! by Anna Maguire and has since published Business + Baby on Board by Johanna Baker-Dowdell. For more information, visit the Editia website.

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