McGregor, Sakr, Apolonio awarded Copyright Agency fellowships
Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund has announced the three recipients of its 2024 writing fellowships, sharing a prize pool of $170,000, which aim to ‘usher in new Australian writing from both emerging and established authors’.
The Author Fellowship, worth $80,000, has been awarded to Sydney-based author, artist and critic Fiona Kelly McGregor, and will support her to complete ‘The Trap,’ which is ‘the final novel in her diptych based on the life of petty criminal Iris Webber’, following the novel Iris (Picador, 2022).
The Fellowship for Nonfiction Writing, also worth $80,000, has been awarded to poet and author Omar Sakr, based in Western Sydney. The fellowship will support the completion of his project ‘Say the Words’, ‘an essay collection that fuses personal experiences with critical analysis of social and cultural constructs’.
Copyright Agency CEO Josephine Johnston said: ‘We’re delighted for Fiona and Omar, not least because these projects offer fresh insight and storytelling to modern Australian literature. Both authors expressed in their applications that these projects require devoted and focused time, for research purposes and to stretch their creative prowess, and without the fellowships, they may not be able to carve out the space to do so.’
Johnston added: ‘To play a small part in supporting new Australian writing—that otherwise may not have found its way to publication—is of great joy to Copyright Agency.’
The Frank Moorhouse Fellowship for Young Writers, valued at $10,000, has been awarded to Sydney-based writer and critic Bryant Apolonio to develop and write their first full length work of fiction, ‘The Fortunate’. The story is set between Sydney and the Philippines and ‘draws upon inherited legacies, obsession, the power of storytelling and the scars left by war, colonisation and authoritarianism’.
Last year’s fellowships were awarded to Chris Womersley, Patrick Mullins and Scott Limbrick (the latter of whom received the inaugural Frank Moorhouse Fellowship). More information about the fellowships is available on the Copyright Agency website.
Pictured (L–R): McGregor, Sakr and Apolonio.
Category: Awards Local news
