ASA announces winners of 2017 Ray Koppe Residency, ASA Medal

The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has announced the winners of the 2017 Ray Koppe Residency Award and ASA Medal.

Western Australian writer Holden Sheppard has won the Ray Koppe Residency Award for his YA novel ‘Invisible Boys’, a ‘contemporary exploration of gay teenage life’.

Judges Aoife Clifford and Tristan Bancks said the novel ‘grapples with the restrictions and prejudice of society and contrasts that with the permissiveness in the digital world’, adding that ‘the opening pages sowed the seeds for a page-turning exploration of sexual and cultural identity’.

The annual Ray Koppe Young Writers’ Residency offers an unpublished writer under 30 a week’s stay at Varuna, The Writers’ House in Katoomba, NSW.

The ASA also announced the winner of the ASA Medal, which was awarded to children’s author Edel Wignell.

The ASA Medal is awarded biennially in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the Australian writing community.

Wignell has authored more than 100 books for children. In 2013 she bequeathed her writing and copyright earnings to the ASA, which has funded the annual ASA Edel Wignell Mentorship for children’s writers for the past four years.

The winners were announced at an event in Sydney on 11 November, along with the joint winners of the 2017 Asher Award.

For more information, visit the ASA website here.

Category: Awards Local news