Ang, McGregor and Nelson win 2019 Woollahra Digital Literary Awards

Rachel Ang, Fiona McGregor and Jason Nelson have won the 2019 Woollahra Digital Literary Awards for writing that was first published online or electronically.

Ang won the fiction category for her story ‘Toot Toot’, published by Going Down Swinging. The judges said Ang’s story ‘offers storytelling that is vivid and specific, honest and illuminating’, adding, ‘Ang unsettles the familiar and skilfully makes familiar her protagonist’s psychological landscape.’

McGregor won in the nonfiction category for ‘The Hot Desk: Working Hot by Mary Fallon’, published by the Sydney Review of Books. According to the judges, McGregor’s account of the publication and reception of Fallon’s 1989 novel is ‘a rich work of literary archiving and activism’. ‘[It] is an exemplary and enlightening essay, one which demonstrates that literary criticism can be, and often is, at the forefront of forging new ways of writing nonfiction within digital spaces.’

Jason Nelson won the poetry category for ‘Nine Billion Branches’, published by Hyperrhiz. ‘[The poem] encourages us to interact with the everyday: a shopping mall, a bedroom, a lounge room, a computer screen dizzy with words—but he uses the rabbit warren-like structures of the web to direct our gaze in ways only possible in poetry, and online,’ the judges said.

Ang and McGregor both receive $3000 and Nelson receives $1000. They were chosen from shortlists announced in May.

For more information about the award, and to read the judges comments in full, see the website.

Category: Local news