Warm congratulations to Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes, winner of the prestigious City of Fremantle Hungerford Award for 2024. Yirga’s memoir, የተስፋ ፈተና / Trials of Hope, is told in both poetry and prose, in English and Amharic (using Ethiopia’s indigenous script, Ge’ez Fidel), and follows his journey from boy shepherd in Ethiopia to human rights academic at Curtin University in Perth.
Yirga is a writer, researcher and poet from Lalibela, Ethiopia, who now lives in suburban Perth with his wife, writer Rebecca Higgie (award-winning author of the astoundingly imaginative The History of Mischief).
Yirga said:
The Hungerford Award means an opening of hope, a realisation that stories and languages like mine could have places in a world where they are rarely heard. People who live carrying multiple worlds shouldn’t have to hide or sacrifice one world to exist in the other world. This too is our home; our stories can be heard.
The City of Fremantle Hungerford Award is presented biennially for an unpublished manuscript by a Western Australian author, with a cash prize of $15,000, a publishing contract with Fremantle Press and, new this year, a residency fellowship with the Centre for Stories in Perth. In its thirty-three year history, the award has introduced many new writers who have gone on to establish stellar careers—among them, two of my all-time favourite writers, Gail Jones and Simone Lazaroo.
Congratulations must also go to the three other shortlisted authors for this year’s award: Howard McKenzie-Murray, Jodie Tes and Fiona Wilkes. Being shortlisted from a field of eighty manuscripts is no small achievement!
The award was judged by writers Richard Rossiter, Marcella Polain and Seth Malacari, and Fremantle Press publishers Georgia Richter and Cate Sutherland.
looking up/looking down 