O’Keeffe wins 2023 UQP Quentin Bryce Award

Angela O’Keeffe has been named the winner of the 2023 University of Queensland Press (UQP) Quentin Bryce Award for her novel The Sitter.

In the novel, ‘two women stand staring out over the quiet streets of Paris during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. One woman is a writer, the other is the writer’s subject, who has been dead since 1922: Hortense Cezanne, wife of painter Paul Cezanne. Hortense has been conjured into being by the writer,’ according to Books+Publishing reviewer Cosima McGrath, who described The Sitter as ‘spellbinding … an elegant mosaic that interrogates power, female relationships, and the purpose of art.’

Quentin Bryce said, ‘The Sitter is a gem of a novel—thoughtful, multilayered and profound—whose subject matter combines two of my lifelong interests: literature and art. The Sitter examines the inspiration and source material for both a novel and an artwork, while connecting two women who exist a century apart yet now find themselves bound together in Paris in early 2020. It’s a special and unusual book and one that I am delighted to select for the 2023 UQP Quentin Bryce Award.’

Established in 2020, the award is for a UQP book that celebrates women’s lives and/or promotes gender equality. O’Keeffe will receive $5000 in prize money, and an additional $5000 will go towards marketing and publicity for the forthcoming title. Bryce and O’Keeffe will appear together at a special live event in Brisbane in September.

The 2022 winner was Mirandi Riwoe’s collection The Burnished Sun, which focuses on women, especially those who are marginalised and disenfranchised.

The Sitter will be published by UQP in August 2023.

Category: Awards Local news