Hazel Rowley Fellowship 2016 finalists announced

Writers Victoria has announced the finalists for the 2016 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship, awarded annually to an Australian writer for a proposed biographical work.

The shortlisted writers and their projects are:

• Alec O’Halloran for a biography of Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, a Pintupi man and Papunya Tula artist from the Western Desert region of Central Australia
• Eleanor Hogan for ‘Into the Loneliness: The Literary Alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates’
• Jacqueline Kent for a biography of Robert Helpmann ‘examined through his friendships, especially with women’
• Jeff Sparrow for a work exploring the legacy of African-American singer Paul Robeson
• Kitty Hauser for a biography of art teacher Geoffrey Bardon, who was influential in the Western Desert art movement at Papunya
• Matthew Lamb for a cultural biography of Frank Moorhouse
• Philip Dwyer for his third volume on Napoleon Bonaparte
• Shannon Burns for his biography of Australian writer Gerald Murnane
• Sharon Huebner for her work on the life of Noongar woman Bessy Flowers.

The fellowship, worth $10,000, is judged this year by biographers Janine Burke and Arnold Zable, Rowley’s friend and co-initiator of the fellowship Lynn Buchanan, and Rowley’s sister Della. The winner will be announced at an event at Adelaide Writers’ Week on 4 March.

The Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship was established in 2011 by the Hazel Rowley Literary Fund with the support of Writers Victoria to encourage Australian authors to attain a high standard of biography writing and to commemorate the life, ideas and writing of Hazel Rowley, who died in 2011.

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, Caroline Baum won the 2015 fellowship for her proposed biography of Lucie Dreyfus.

For more information about the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship, visit the Writers Victoria website here.

Category: Local news