Parrett wins Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship

15 October 2012 Books+Publishing

Favel Parrett has been awarded the 2012 Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship by the Federal Government.

Parrett, whose debut novel Past the Shallows (Hachette) won the Australian Book Industry Award for Newcomer of the Year and was shortlisted for the 2012 Miles Franklin Literary Award, will use the fellowship to research a novel based on the Nella Dan—an Australian Antarctic Division supply ship that was used for 26 years. Parrett will travel to Antarctica on the Aurora Australis icebreaker in November and will visit Australia’s Davis station before returning to Australia in December.

Australian Antarctic Division director Tony Fleming said in a statement that Parrett’s novel ‘will draw attention to Australia’s rich Antarctic history and the Nella Dan’s role’. ‘Through this fellowship, Favel will get the opportunity to experience first-hand what it is like to travel on a working polar and marine science vessel, visiting one of the stations and the areas that Nella Dan worked in,’ he said.

As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, Parrett’s forthcoming novel received one of the first Book2 program grants from the Australia Council for the Arts in 2011. The Australia Council said last year that Parrett planned to use the $50,000 grant to undertake an expedition by ship from Hobart, Tasmania, to Macquarie Island, and to spend time researching the novel in Tasmania at the Antarctic Division in Kingston and the Hobart Maritime Museum.

The 2011 Antarctic Arts Fellowship was awarded to Jesse Blackadder, who used the fellowship to research a novel about the first woman to reach Antarctica. Chasing the Light by Blackadder will be published by HarperCollins in February 2013.

For more information about the Antarctic Arts Fellowship, click here.

Category: Local news