Allum wins 2023 Fogarty Literary Award for ‘The Skeleton House’
Katherine Allum has won the 2023 Fogarty Literary Award for her novel The Skeleton House.
Allum receives a $20,000 cash prize from the Fogarty Foundation and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press. The Skeleton House is a work of literary fiction set in a small town in the Nevada desert, that follows Meg, a married mother of two. Everyone thinks her husband Kyle is perfect but tension rises as Kyle builds his dream home and Meg’s desire for autonomy and freedom resurfaces, as does a secret from the past.
Allum said the manuscript began as a question and an image. Her question was what if someone like her—a self-described ‘introspective writer geek and weird home-schooled kid’, who spent her final school years in a small American town in the desert—had terrible bad luck, lacked support and found herself stuck. Allum said her image was, ‘Crickets and creosote. A teenage boy and girl on a red quad bike, roaring down a dirt road into nowhere, their pale throats exposed as they holler to the thick indigo desert night. They disappear and the sun rises. There’s a skeleton house, its timber frame silhouetted against the dawn sky.’
The American-born and Nedlands-based writer worked on her novel as part of an MA at City, University of London, working on it while also working full time during Covid from a one-bedroom flat. ‘All the grand, beautiful things done in this world are done by tired people making time out of nothing,’ said Allum.
The Skeleton House was chosen by Fremantle Press publishers Georgia Richter and Cate Sutherland and 2021 Fogarty Literary Award winner Brooke Dunnell, from a shortlist of six announced earlier this month. The authors of the other shortlisted manuscripts will work with Richter and Sutherland to further develop their entries.
The Fogarty Literay Award is presented biennially award to a Western Australian writer between the ages of 18 and 35. ‘Once again the Fogarty Award is doing exactly what it was designed to do,’ said Fremantle Press CEO Alex Allan. ‘Not only is Katherine a talented writer with an amazing manuscript but her drive and her support for others makes us even more excited to be working with her. She epitomises the literary leadership that is so important to the values and mission of the Fogarty Foundation.’
The winner of the 2021 award was Brooke Dunnell for her novel The Glass House.
Fremantle Press will publish The Skeleton House in 2024.
Category: Awards Local news
