Microsoft Word – HNSA ARA Historical Novel Prize Media release

Australia’s leading infrastructure and facilities service provider ARA Group has partnered with The Historical Novel Society Australasia (HNSA) to announce a new major literary prize, set to award $30,000 to an outstanding historical novelist. The new ARA Historical Novel Prize gives Australian and New Zealand historical novelists the chance to be recognised in a class of their own, with the most significant prize money for any genre-based prize in Australasia. Entries will be judged on excellence in writing, depth of research, and reader appeal.

ARA Group Founder, Executive Chair and Managing Director Ed Federman said as a patron of historical literature, he was honoured to partner with HNSA to launch ARA Group’s first-of-its-kind major literary prize. “ARA Group has been involved in advocating for and celebrating the arts for many years through our Principal Partnership of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Monkey Baa Theatre, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, and our workplace giving program, the ARA Endowment Fund. We are hopeful this prize will have a profound impact on the life of the winning author in this increasingly popular genre, and create a lasting legacy. It’s important we help foster the arts in Australasia not only to enrich people’s lives, creating a culture of reading and writing, but also to ensure our stories and history live on.” he said.

Applications are open to all authors — whether traditionally or self-published — who are residents or citizens of Australia or New Zealand, with books published between 1 January 2019 and 30 June 2020. Entries may be submitted by authors, publishers and agents.

HNSA Chair and Author Elisabeth Storrs said the award recognises and rewards authors with both literary acclaim and a tangible benefit. “After building a community of writers, readers and publishing professionals over our past three biennial conferences, the HNSA is delighted to be given the chance to raise the profile of a genre that values creativity, authenticity and discovery,” she said. “We are grateful to the ARA Group for its financial support, which will make a substantial contribution to the winner’s work.”

ARA Group and HNSA are also pleased to gain the assistance of the New England Writers’ Centre (NEWC), based in Armidale NSW, which will administer the submission process. Author and Chair of NEWC, Sophie Masson, said: “As a dynamic regional arts organisation in an area rich in literary history, the New England Writers’ Centre has always supported great writing and opportunities for writers. We are absolutely delighted to be involved in the inauguration of such a major new fiction prize, which will highlight the strength of a most exciting and diverse genre.”

The definition of the genre set for the prize will ensure a breadth of talented writers is eligible to enter. Historical fiction will be defined as a novel written at least 50 years after the events described, or by an author not alive at the time of the events described, who therefore must approach those events only through research. Various historical subgenres, including Children and Young Adult, are also eligible.

Submissions open on 1 May and close on 30 June 2020. The longlist will be released in mid-September with the shortlist announced mid-October. The prize winner will be announced on 18 November 2020. More information about the prize can be found at www.hnsa.org.au/ara-historical-novel-prize HNSA Media Contact: ELISABETH STORRS contact@hnsa.org.au 0414 867 673

Survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/UWACreativeWriting

We invite you to participate in a survey, as part of research into creative writing pedagogy at both secondary and tertiary levels in Western Australia. This project aims to understand the way in which creative writing is currently taught as a subject/discipline in both the secondary and tertiary setting with Western Australia.

With a focus specifically on pedagogy, this project will combine a review of current teaching practice with consideration of the writing practice of established and professional creative writers, in an effort to understand the factors that influence the teaching of creative writing in a classroom setting. This project looks to consider the nexus between secondary and tertiary teaching, and support our ability as educators in scaffolding students’ transitions from one educational domain to the other.

The survey aims at identifying the base tenants of your pedagogical and teaching practice in creative writing. The survey will be conducted via an online survey portal, and should take no more than 10 minutes. The survey will not seek to identify you, and all responses will be considered confidential. No identifying details will be collected or disclosed at any point.

If you would like to participate or discuss any aspect of this study please feel free to contact Dr. Catherine Noske on (08) 6488 2063

Claire Jones and Dr. Catherine Noske

We had a fantastic three days at UTS in Sydney.

The papers were engaging, the food was good (though the haloumi wraps were sadly absent), and the weather was decent – thunderstorms and smoke not withstanding.

We have a few changes to the running of the AAWP and its executive, which will be coming in a later post. For now, please enjoy these pictures collected by the delegates and social media officers!

The AAWP / ASSF Prize is a publication pathway for emerging writers. The prize is open to short stories. The Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) is delighted to partner with the Australian Short Story Festival (ASSF) to provide this publication pathway for emerging writers. Heartfelt thanks to the judges for managing the judging process with such integrity—thank you for so generously donating your time in the interests of emerging writers.

2019 Winner: Anne Hotta for ‘Kanreki’

Judges’ report:

Anne Hotta’s ‘Kanreki’ is a quietly funny and heart-warming story about an older Japanese woman finding a new passion in dancing the Tango after her husband dies, much to her conservative son’s chagrin. It’s a story about going against traditions and finding ways to be happy within yourself. With writing that is spare but detailed, the reader is gently brought into the foreign universe of the story through the thrill of a crush, which most of us can relate to. ‘Kanreki’ is a multi-layered story that the judges loved reading and re-reading. The standard was high and the judges would like to commend three other entries. Congratulations to the winner and the commended writers.

Commended entries:

‘Sean’ by Judi Morison

‘Freeing Yasmin’ by Wendy Riley

‘Infinite Scroll’ by Rebecca Bryson

About the winner:

Anne Hotta is an Australian now living in Victoria. Anne spent fifteen years living Tokyo and five in New York. She is a teacher with various hobbies, the most important being creative writing. She has written nonfiction articles for newspapers, journals and magazines, but would like to be a successful writer of fiction. In a short but dedicated career, she has had a few stories published by literary magazines in Australia and has received five, now six, awards in both Australian and international competitions.

The AAWP / SC Prize is a publication pathway for emerging writers. The prize is open to creative nonfiction. The Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) is delighted to partner with Slow Canoe Live Journal (SC) to provide this publication pathway for emerging writers. Heartfelt thanks to the judge for managing the judging process with such integrity—thank you for so generously donating your time in the interests of emerging writers.

2019 Winner: Anna Kate Blair ‘Marguerite Duras at the Tepid Baths’

Judging is despairing. Not because there are so few good pieces, but because there are so many that are so near to being fully realised, that never quite arrive, however much they promise that they will. There are of course, inevitably, bad pieces too, that feel like so many small electric shocks. That is meaningless. Every writer, perhaps, arguably, I would say, particularly those who are on to something, that are reaching for something, will in the beginning write poorly or ungenerously or wrongheadedly. I can think of a handful of writers that seem to have been born fully realised, though more likely they were born knowing how to hold off until they were. Maybe Anne Carson, definitely J.M. Coetzee: writers who themselves don’t quite feel real, who don’t have volume, particularly inconstant volume, the way the rest of us do.

So when you are judging, and you’re reading piece after piece, and you come across a writer who clicks words into sentences, and then clicks those sentences into paragraphs in a way that feels unquestionable, it’s a shock. It’s a little bit amusing. It makes you remember why you spend the time doing what you do. You don’t quite hear the back parts of your brain saying thank you, thank you, to the author as you read, but that is what’s being said back there. I think of funny Louis Kahn, the architect, asking brick what brick wants to be and saying, in front of a hall full of students, brick wants to be an arch. A good sentence, a good piece of writing, is simply one that feels as though it wants to exist, wants to be.

The winning entry of the inaugural AAWP SC Creative Nonfiction Prize, ‘Marguerite Duras at the Tepid Baths’, by Anna Kate Blair, is a very fine piece of writing. It’s about what it’s about and has to be read, but, in a simple, not quite right sense, it’s about the author taking up an activity, or inhabiting an obsession, of a person they’re experiencing the loss of and a tangible grief for, while they are also experiencing an apparently lesser, yet more immediate, grief, of a relationship breakdown. It works beautifully – as a cohesive block it’s quietly moving and quietly funny; it carefully and elegantly builds both a physical and conscious reality. But it also takes control of your reading – it has that tensile slow urgency that drags you far enough into itself so that you experience its elements, in the small and limited way that’s available to us, as the author does. I look forward to seeing what Anna Kate Blair does next. 

I would also like to acknowledge another excellent entry: ‘The Price of Perfection’, by Helena Gjone, about a personal experience of the cruel rigour of the Bolshoi Ballet Academy and questions around weight and beauty around dance more generally. This is an excellent piece of writing, showing genuine, early promise.

About the winner:
Anna Kate Blair is a writer from New Zealand. She holds a PhD in History of Art and Architecture from the University of Cambridge. Her work has appeared in publications including Litro, The Appendix, King’s Review and 10 Stories: Writing About Architecture. She is currently a Grace Marion Wilson Fellow at Glenfern Writers’ Studios in Melbourne. 

About the commended author:
Helena Gjone recently completed the bachelor of psychological science and is currently undertaking honours in creative writing at Griffith University.

The AAWP / UWRF Prize is a publication pathway for emerging writers. The prize is open to fiction or poetry. The Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) is delighted to partner with Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) to provide this publication pathway for emerging writers. Heartfelt thanks to the judges for managing the judging process with such integrity—thank you for so generously donating your time in the interests of emerging writers.

2019 Winner: Annabel Stafford for ‘Acid’

Judges’ report:

The winning entry for this year’s contest is Annabel Stafford for ‘Acid’. The voice is fresh and raw, intent on unpeeling the mystery of a child’s pain. Stafford presents early, if not primitive, aspects of life in dramatic and uncompromising ways, stripping the world of easy sentiments, highlighting the visceral qualities of experience, its haunting and its premonitions of disaster. The intensity of the story, and its focus on multiple ways of understanding the word ‘acid’ in a medical and societal frame of reference is tempered by the Stafford’s deeply human engagement with the topic. Like smoke rising from a candle and casting shadows and lights that shift and evade, the story will draw you in, hold you firmly there as the story unfolds and in its wake.

About the winner:

Annabel Stafford is a casual teacher in the creative writing program at the University of Technology, Sydney, where she completed her Doctorate of Creative Arts in 2018. She was formerly a federal political reporter for The Australian Financial Review and The Age and Sydney Correspondent for The Age. She has also been published in The Griffith Review, Meanjin, The Good Weekend, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Tablet among other publications. 

Chapter One is a publication pathway for emerging writers. The prize is open to authors who have written a poetry collection, literary novel, short story collection, or a hybrid work that crosses genre boundaries. The Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) is delighted to partner with University of Western Australia Publishing (UWAP) to provide this publication pathway for emerging writers. Heartfelt thanks to the judge for managing the judging process with such integrity—thank you for so generously donating your time in the interests of emerging writers.

2019 Winner: Benjamin Muir for The McMillan Diaries.

Judge’s report:

The submission I favour is the one that has come to me as The McMillan Diaries.   The standard of writing in all the submissions is very high, and a good proportion seem to me to be worthy of publication.  I have chosen The McMillan Diaries, though, because of its special ingenuity and inventiveness.  I find it impossible to separate out its various strands – fact and fiction, scholarly interpolation or satire on scholarship, history and fantasy – and  immediately somehow I felt the need for far more than one chapter and one brief synopsis to ‘orient myself’ with this work, while at the same time wondering f the whole exercise wasn’t just a Laurence Sterne ‘shaggy dog story’, but one which, as in the case with Tristam Shandy, distributes a lot of wisdom and insight along the way, as it romps through a veritable smorgasbord of genres, interpolations and digressions (much of which comes in the scholarly appendages), while constantly in review of its own methods, strategies and subterfuges. 

It’s a work which generously toys with and takes inspiration from the mysteries at its core: from the small part I have been given to read, it neatly offers the spectacle of the mystery of its central subject working its way up and out into the structure, the prose and the methods of the investigation.  The whole novel will not, I suspect, ‘solve’ the mystery as it seems itself so heavily infected and shaped by it?  For me, it evokes Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, Borges, Sebald – that delicious feeling that the writer is somehow ‘having a lend of one’, dismantling (and satirizing?) the kind of assurances and conventions that usually support this mode of inquiry.

It is, however, a work of serious intent – as is of course the case in all those writers I’ve noted above.  Can this writer pull it off?  Will the core narrative, at full length, keep the reader engaged and focussed, while at the same time being entertained, waylaid, diverted, teased and provoked?  I couldn’t be sure, from just this one chapter and brief synopsis.  It is indeed a very risky venture.  I think that’s why I have chosen it… 

About the winner:

“Benjamin D. Muir is a writer and doctoral candidate from Western Sydney, who predominantly authors postmodern Gothic and horror fiction. His work has appeared previously in FBI Radio’s Or it Didn’t Happen and Antipodean Science Fiction. He is currently completing the manuscript that won AAWP’s First Chapter contest as the creative component of his DCA thesis. The exegetical component examines depictions of grief and trauma in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves and The Fifty Year Sword, the works that chiefly informed his creative component. You can follow his work atfacebook.com/benjamindmuir and @benjamindmuir on Twitter.“  

Registrations for the 12th annual gathering, ‘Bridging Worlds with Words’ #APWT2019, from 5-7th November at the University of Macau are now open!

“In addition to a stellar line up of feature authors, registered participants at APWT get to be part of the experience.

Would you like to launch a book, speak on a particular issue, run a workshop or propose a panel or event? We’re open to your ideas and want to hear from you. The sooner you register the sooner we can begin to consider you as a priority in our programming. Register now to tell us how you would like to be involved. With generous member, early bird and student discounts it’s time to lock in Macau! Visit our website now for full details” 

Axon: Creative Explorations (ISSN 1838-8973; axonjournal.com.au) is a Scopus-listed journal that publishes material aimed at building understandings about creativity, the creative process, and the cultural contexts, and theoretical frameworks, that inform creative practice.

For issue 9.2, ‘Living in the world: creativity, science, environments’, we are publishing material associated with cities and creative thinking/practice; creativity and space/place; science/art relationships, and related matters. We invite submissions of between 500 and 6000 words, by 30 September. Details and submission portal can be found here

Please join us for the Australian Short Story Festival: October 18-20 2019.

This is the first time the festival will be held in Melbourne and we look forward to welcoming you.