This morning I attended the announcement of the 2014 City of Fremantle TAG Hungerford Award shortlist, a biennial award given to a manuscript by a Western Australian author previously unpublished in book form. The winner will receive a cash prize of $12,000 and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press.
The award has launched the writing careers of eleven previous recipients, some of whom have gone on to receive national and international recognition with their published work. The previous winners are: Brenda Walker (1990), Gail Jones (1991), Simone Lazaroo (1993), Bruce Russell (1995), Christopher Murray (2000), Nathan Hobby (2002), Donna Mazza (2004), Alice Nelson (2006), Natasha Lester (2008), Jacqueline Wright (2010) and Robert Edeson (2012).
I was thrilled to see Louise Allan on the shortlist, for her novel Ida’s Children, recently featured in the looking up/looking down series The next wave: you can read the post here. Congratulations, Louise!
Of course, my congratulations extend to all five shortlisted authors. It’s a significant, meaningful achievement, and I look forward to picking up all these titles off a bookshop shelf in the future.
2014 shortlisted authors and manuscripts
Louise Allan, Ida’s Children
Madelaine Dickie, Troppo
Portland Jones, Seeing the Elephant
Mihaela Nicolescu, Other Place
Nicole Sinclair, All That’s Gone Before
Portland Jones, Mihaela Nicolescu, Fremantle Mayor Brad Pettitt, Louise Allan, Nicole Sinclair, Fremantle Press fiction publisher Georgia Richter
The winner will be announced early in 2015. Good luck to you all!
looking up/looking down 