McCamish, Williamson awarded Myer Foundation stipends

28 May 2013 Books+Publishing

The Myer Foundation has announced the recipients of the inaugural Merlyn Myer Biography Stipends.

The stipends, which are valued at $50,000 each, have been awarded to Thornton McCamish and Geordie Williamson. As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the stipends are an initiative of the Sidney Myer Fund and are awarded to assist Australian authors during the research and writing phase of a major biography under commission from an Australian publisher. McCamish and Williamson were chosen from 19 eligible proposals.

McCamish received the stipend for Alan Moorehead (working title), a biography of the journalist and author, commissioned by Black Inc.. McCamish is a former editor of the Big Issue, a regular contributor to the Age and the author of the travel book Super Cargo (Lonely Planet). Black Inc. publisher Chris Feik said in a statement that McCamish has ‘a prose style that sparkles’ and ‘the ability to turn his fascination into an involving story of discovery, thereby making a perceptive, humorous and original contribution to the art of biography’.

Williamson received the stipend for The Kings of Rapa Nui, a ‘group biography’ of members of his family who ran a commercial empire in South America, commissioned by Text Publishing. Williamson, who is chief literary critic at the Australian, won the 2011 Pascall Prize for critical writing and is the author of The Burning Library (Text). Text publisher Michael Heyward said Williamson’s book will be ‘one of the most unusual biographies Text has ever published’ and will include ‘a blend of autobiography, memoir and family history that has much to teach us about empires and colonies, money and power, possession and dispossession’.

Both publishers congratulated the Myer Foundation for the stipend program, with Feik saying Australia lacks ‘a deep culture of biography’ and that ‘too often we forget our best and brightest’. Heyward said the initiative ‘will not only benefit the writing of biography in Australia but it will deepen our understanding of remarkable Australians’.

For more information about the Merlyn Myer Biography Stipends, click here.

Category: Local news