Hunt awarded inaugural Boundless Indigenous Writer’s Mentorship
Barkindji writer Allanah Hunt has been awarded the inaugural Boundless Indigenous Writer’s Mentorship.
Her winning manuscript, ‘Forever and Ever’, tells the story of a young woman reckoning with her unplanned pregnancy and the secrets of her dysfunctional family.
‘It has been my dream for the longest time to be a professional writer and I am so grateful this mentorship is helping me realise that dream,’ says Hunt.
She will begin a year-long mentorship with Indigenous writer Tara June Winch, who praised Hunt’s manuscript for its lyricism, adding: ‘I’m looking forward to being a sounding board [for her] ideas, guiding her through the business of being a writer and helping her shape her voice into a manuscript ready for publication.’
Hunt will also receive editorial feedback from Text Publishing and access to Writing NSW’s professional development services. At the end of the year-long mentorship, both Winch and Hunt will be sponsored to attend Boundless, a festival for diverse writers to be held in Sydney in 2019.
Hunt’s manuscript was chosen from a shortlist of four, which included ‘Finding Billy Brown’ by Edoardo Crismani, ‘Spellsinger’ by Alexander Habliay and ‘Fire Country’ by Victor Steffensen.
The Boundless Indigenous Mentorship program was launched in June as a partnership between Text Publishing and Writing NSW and is also supported by the First Nations Australia Writers Network. The nationwide mentoring program aims to support an emerging Indigenous writer who has ‘made substantial progress’ on a manuscript by pairing them with a senior Indigenous writer in the same genre.
For more information, see the Writing NSW website.
Tags: Writing NSW
Category: Local news
