Copyright Agency funding: Au, Tsao receive $25k Create grants, new fellowship for young writers

Twenty-one arts organisations have received a total of $274,517 in the latest round of funding from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund. The major capital city writers’ festivals and Byron Writers’ Festival will also receive a total of $100,000 to ‘promote and raise the profile of Australian writers and to reach more readers’.

The Copyright Agency also announced Jessica Au and Tiffany Tsao as the literary recipients of two $25,000 Create Grants. Au will use her grant work to develop her new novel The New Evening, which explores the idea of intellectual and personal coming-of-age, while Tsao will write BUT WON’T I MISS ME? a philosophical speculative fiction work set in a society where women who give birth also give birth to a new version of themselves.

In the latest round of funding, Cultural Fund grants were awarded to the following writing and literature-related organisations:

Professional development

• Association for the Study of Australian Literature ($12,000), for the 2023 Writers and Critics Program
• Australian Society of Authors ($24,000), for Copyright Agency Developmental Mentorships for Writers and Illustrators
• Express Media ($16,800), for Toolkits 2023: Connect
• Left Bank Literary on behalf of Open Book: Australian Publishing Internship/APA ($15,000), for Open Book: Australian Publishing Internship

Publications

• Australian Book Review ($10,000), for commentary and longer book reviews
• Griffith University, Griffith Review ($20,000), for Emerging Voices Award 2023
• HEAT magazine ($10,000), for writers’ fees in 2023
• Island magazine ($10,000), for writers’ fees and the Nonfiction Prize 2023

Organisations

• Australian Publishers Association ($15,000), for BookUp 2023: Common Ground
• Children’s Book Council of Australia ($10,000), for the Shadow Judging project with writers and illustrators
• Red Room Poetry ($10,900), for Poetry Month 30in30
• Small Press Network ($15,000), for 2023 Independent Publishing Conference
• Writing WA ($11,625), for Love to Read Local Week 2023.

The Copyright Agency has also announced the establishment of a new $10,000 fellowship for young writers, the Copyright Agency Frank Moorhouse Fellowship for Young Writers.

Copyright Agency CEO Josephine Johnston said the new fellowship, created in recognition of the late Frank Moorhouse, ‘honours his ongoing support and mentorship of young writers’, ‘is a fitting tribute to one of our finest writers’ and acknowledges Moorhouse’s ‘instrumental role in setting up the Copyright Agency to ensure Australian creators received fair recompense for the copying and sharing of their valuable works’.

Fellowships applications will open in early 2023 for young fiction writers aged 18–35.

For the full list of successful applicants in this round of Cultural Fund funding, see the Copyright Agency website.

Category: Local news