The AAWP is delighted to announce the winners of the 2016 Postgraduate Prizes for the most outstanding theoretical and creative papers presented at this year’s annual conference.

The winner of the theoretical stream is Rachel Franks (University of Sydney) for her paper ‘Stealing stories: Punishment, profit and the Ordinary of Newgate’. The judges considered it ‘Impeccably researched and exquisitely written.. show[ing] the dirty underbelly of crime writing’s history.’

Highly Commended was Jason Nahrung’s (University of Queensland) paper: ‘Stolen Futures: The Anthropocene in Australian science fiction mosaic novels’.  The judges considered it ‘well-researched…the writing suggests that the word might hold sway over power politics and economic might.’

The winner of the creative stream is Rowena Lennox (University of Technology Sydney) for her paper arising from an interview with Jennifer Parkhurst ‘Coolooloi’. The judges were impressed by its ‘fascinating combination of interview, personal experience and reflection on inter-species interaction on Fraser Island.’ And its ‘a fresh and excitingly critical approach to the interview as a collaborative form.’

Highly commended in this stream was Caitlin Malling (University of Sydney) for her poetry sequence ‘Spending a Month with William Stafford in Oregon’. Judges commended the pieces’ ‘way of experiencing place, framed within the still-emerging discipline of eco-poetics, and of a vital and energetic engagement with the possibilities and challenges of process-driven writing.

The winner of both prizes receives $300; subscriptions to Overland; Review of Australian Fiction; and Griffith Review; and the opportunity to co-edit the conference proceedings.

The AAWP thanks all entrants in both streams for their thoughtful and rigorous contributions. The AAWP is grateful to the judges: Dominique Hecq; Natalie Kon-Yu; Rachel Robertson and Nike Sulway for their generous support of our thriving PhD community.