Ismail, Stewart awarded $50k Marten Bequest scholarship
Rafeif Ismail and Emily Stewart are among the seven recipients of the 2023 Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarships, each worth $50,000.
Ismail, who received the prose scholarship, is an emerging award-winning multilingual storyteller, who arrived in Australia in 2003 as a refugee fleeing Sudan. The managing editor of Djed Press and co-editor of Unlimited Futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction (Fremantle Press & Djed Press), Ismail has published works of fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry in national journals and anthologies and will use the scholarship to pursue a two-year self-directed development program, including time at a writer’s desk at The Centre for Stories in Western Australia; an application to the 2023 Clarion West Writers Workshop in the US; a formal mentorship; and research trips in Australia, the UK and Egypt.
Stewart, who received the poetry scholarship, is an award-winning poet and former poetry editor at Giramondo, whose book Running time (Vagabond Press) won the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest. Her first book Knocks won the Noel Rowe Poetry Award and was one of SMH’s books of the year. Stewart recently co-edited an edition of Cordite Poetry Review (with Eloise Grills) and is currently guest-editing Australian Poetry Journal. The scholarship will help support research and writing time for her next book.
The seven recipients of the Marten Bequest scholarships are:
- Eliza Scott, acting
- Dylan Phillips, ballet
- Victor Arul, instrumental music
- Jessie Nash, painting
- Emily Stewart, poetry
- Rafeif Ismail, prose
- Jeremy Boulton, singing.
The scholarships are administered by the Australia Council on behalf of Perpetual as Trustee and were established by John Chisholm Marten, a lifelong patron of the arts and literature, to develop the artistic practice of young artists through travel. They offer ‘talented young artists the chance to explore, study and develop their artistic gifts through travelling interstate and/or overseas’.
For more information about this year’s recipients, see the Australia Council website.
Pictured (L–R): Rafeif Ismail and Emily Stewart
Category: Awards Local news
