Morison awarded 2022 Boundless Mentorship

Gamilaroi writer Judi Morison has won the 2022 Boundless Indigenous Writer’s Mentorship for her family saga ‘When Grandmothers Speak’.

Set in Queensland and northern New South Wales in the 1950s, ‘When Grandmothers Speak’ is a ‘capable and ambitious novel with great potential’ according to author and 2022 mentorship judge Julie Janson. ‘The depiction of racism in the 1950s is a painful reminder of Australian recent history. It is realistic and the story paints an image of love and shame,’ said Janson.

Morison will be mentored by writer, filmmaker and academic Larissa Behrendt in a structured year-long mentorship to develop her manuscript.

‘Winning the Boundless Indigenous Writer’s Mentorship is inspiring for me,’ said Morison. ‘The prospect of working with, and learning from, Larissa Behrendt, such a remarkable senior Indigenous writer, with added support from Text Publishing and Writing NSW, has refocused my commitment to writing about the social issues and recent history my work explores, and makes the writing journey feel less solitary.’

Morison, who led the South Coast Writers Centre’s 2021 Emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers Mentoring Program, won a 2020 Queensland Writers Centre Publishable mentorship and was previously shortlisted for the 2018 Varuna First Nations and 2019 Penguin Random House Write It! fellowships for an earlier historical novel manuscript.

Presented by Text Publishing and Writing NSW, with the support of Booktopia, the Boundless Mentorship is an annual award for emerging Indigenous writers who have made ‘substantial progress on a fiction or nonfiction writing project’.

Last year’s recipient was Lenora Thaker. For more information about the mentorship, see the Writing NSW website.

Category: Awards Local news