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UWAP announces 2018 Dorothy Hewett Award shortlist

UWA Publishing has announced the shortlist for the 2018 Dorothy Hewett Award for an unpublished manuscript.

The shortlisted authors and their works are:

  • Teresa Bell for ‘Lunation’, an ‘ambitious’ novel told in 72 frames, ‘which plays with representation and ambiguities and is dedicated to those who we lock up’.
  • Angela Gardner for ‘Some Sketchy Notes on Matter’, a collection of ‘beautifully controlled poems’ that display ‘a hovering intelligence and a laudable lack of ego’.
  • Kate Gordon for ‘Everything as Perfect as a Bird’, an ‘intriguing story of a young woman entering adulthood’ that ‘explores fundamentalist Christian communities, gender and its restrictive settings alongside potential fluidities, and the life of artists in colonies’.
  • Louise Helfgott for ‘Thistledown Seed’, a work of both fiction and memoir that ‘follows the displacement and violence of the Holocaust for a Polish family that subsequently settles in Western Australia’.
  • Julie Watts for ‘Legacy’, a collection of poems that ‘reflect, with grace, honesty and a sometimes unnerving directness, on the complex interconnections of contemporary life’.

Now in its third year, the award attracted 99 entries of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, up from 85 last year. The judging panel includes poet Lucy Dougan, critic James Ley and UWA Publishing director Terri-ann White.

The winner, which will be announced during the 2018 Perth Writers Week, will receive $10,000 and a publishing contract with UWA Publishing. Odette Kelada won the award last year for her novel about Australian women writers, Drawing Sybylla.

 

Category: Awards Local news