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Writers Victoria announces Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund recipients

Writers Victoria has announced the first round of recipients for the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund.

Ten successful writers, playwrights and publishers were selected from of 205 applicants to receive a total of $49,967.

The recipients are:

  • Alexandra Collier: playwright attending a New York professional development workshop for her musical ‘Triplight’
  • Andrew Bovell: playwright participating in a residency program to develop a new work with Spanish theatre director Julian Fuentes Reta
  • Arwen Summers: publisher attending a publishing course at Yale University
  • Bren MacDibble: writer travelling through rural New South Wales and Victoria as research for her ‘dystopian, climate-focused novel’
  • Eda Gunaydin: writer travelling to France and Germany for ‘a novel that explores first-and-second-generation members of the Turkish diaspora’
  • Michael Earp: writer and bookseller attending a children’s bookselling conference in New Orleans and a writing residency in Pennsylvania
  • Michael Green: journalist undergoing a research trip to Manus Island ‘to inform an essay on the impending closure of the detention centre’, and to Brisbane ‘to follow the coronial inquiry into the death of Faysal Ishak Ahmed’
  • Mark O’Flynn: writer travelling to Tasmania to research a novel on the 1933 arrival of German SS agents on the island
  • Robert Dessaix: writer attending in the Kolkata, Chennai and Jaipur Literary Festivals
  • Vanessa Russell: writer travelling to Christmas Island, Port Headland and Acacia Prison as research for her novel ‘Refugee Zoo’.

The judges for the first round were Hachette commissioning editor Robert Watkins, Embiggen Books owner Warren Bonnet and author Toni Jordan.

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund will award $300,000 in grants over the next three years to writers, editors, agents, publishers, booksellers and other literary professionals.

The fund is supported by the Myer Foundation, and applications for the second round will be open from 1 February to 1 March 2018.

 

Category: Awards Local news