Writers Victoria announces winners of its emerging writers prizes

Writers Victoria has announced the 2017 winners of the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers Competition.

The Grace Marion Wilson Prize in the fiction category was awarded to Kieran Stevenson for his story ‘Skin’.

Judges Mark Brandi and Michelle Scott Tucker said the story ‘transcends the usual tropes with a mesmerising shift—this is a compelling and powerful demonstration of compressed storytelling’.

Zoe Bradley was the runner-up for fiction for her story ‘Crack’, while high commendations were awarded to Thomas Minogue for ‘Helen Earth’ and Ben Oost for ‘Mumtaz’.

The prize in the nonfiction category was awarded to Christine Hill for her essay ‘How could you do this to us?’, about a perinatal psychotherapist visiting asylum-seekers in a detention centre.

Judge Sian Prior praised Hill for depicting the ‘Kafkaesque environment in which these refugee parents spend interminable days, months and years’ in a voice that is ‘restrained, authoritative and quietly enraged’.

The runner-up in the nonfiction category was Susan Bennett for ‘Melbourne ‘89’, and high commendations were awarded to Linda Judge for ‘The Odyssey’, Ann Dinh for ‘Christmas Excrucinaire’ and Warwick Sprawson for ‘The Island of Flowers’.

Each winner receives $1000 and publication in Writers Victoria’s magazine The Victorian Writer. Runners-up are also published in the magazine and receive $250.

For more information on the winners, visit the Writers Victoria website here.

Category: Local news