Vizard wins Banjo Prize for ‘The Love Contract’

Steph Vizard has won HarperCollins’s Banjo Prize, for her unpublished manuscript ‘The Love Contract’.

Chosen from a shortlist of five, Vizard’s novel is described by the publisher as ‘an enemies-to-lovers romance about a sole-mum-by-choice and a workaholic lawyer who pretend they’re a family for three months to get ahead’. ‘It’s a warm-hearted, sharply observed and very funny novel that will appeal to all fans of Beth O’Leary, Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood.’

‘It was an immense challenge to narrow down the entries this year as we had so many fabulous submissions,’ said HarperCollins fiction publisher Anna Valdinger. ‘But “The Love Contract” caught my attention from the first page. It’s an utterly charming rom-com … and also shines a light on an issue that so many of us struggle with—balancing work and life, ambition and family. I can’t wait to share this delightful novel with readers.’

The fifth winner of the Banjo Prize for commerical fiction, Vizard receives a publishing contract with HarperCollins with a $15,000 advance, while the four runners-up will each receive a written assessment of their manuscript from the publisher. The winner of last year’s prize was Veronica Lando for her mystery The Whispering, published in July 2022.

HarperCollins will publish The Love Contract in 2023. For more information about the award, see the HarperCollins website.

Category: Awards Local news