Kefala wins 2022 Patrick White Award

Sydney-based author Antigone Kefala is the winner of this year’s $15,000 Patrick White Literary Award.

The award recognises Kefala’s achievements as a poet, and a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Kefala is the author of memoir collections Sydney Journals and Late Journals (both Giramondo), as well as several works of fiction and poetry, including Fragments (Giramondo), which won the 2017 Judith Wright Calanthe Award and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry.

Kefala’s work is the focus of two anthologies: Antigone Kefala: A writer’s journey (ed by Vrasidas Karalis & Helen Nickas, Owl Publishing, 2009), which collects reviews, essays and analytical writing, and the 2021 publication Antigone Kefala: New Australian modernities (ed by Elizabeth McMahon & Brigitta Olubas, UWAP).

On winning the award, Kefala said: ‘I am full of admiration for Patrick White, and for the encouragement he has given to Australian writers. I met him several times and liked him. I am very honoured to receive this prestigious award given in his name, and the recognition it offers, as for a long time my writing has existed outside the major lines of Australian literature.’

Patrick White established the annual literary award using the proceeds of his 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. The award, for authors who ‘have made a significant but inadequately recognised contribution to Australian literature’, does not involve a submission process. This year’s judging panel was chaired by Felicity Plunkett and included Julieanne Lamond and Michelle de Kretser.

‘Kefala’s longstanding contribution to Australian literature through her outstanding collection of fiction, poetry and collection of novellas and journals, encapsulates the very essence of the Patrick White Literary Award’, said Caitriona Fay, managing partner of community and social investment at Perpetual, which manages the award.

The winner of last year’s Patrick White Award was poet Adam Aitken.

Category: Awards Local news