Information, inspiration and insights into the writing life
Round 4 of the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund received 111 applications, requesting a total of $559,410 in grant money.
This round's judges were writer Roanna Gonsalves, Aviva Tuffield from University of Queensland Press, and Jackie Tang from Readings. They were impressed with the overall quality of the applications in what was a competitive round, awarding a total of $49,569 to 12 recipients.
CC: The move away from commercial to network television has allowed TV writing to break out of some of its traditional boundaries in terms of format and audience. What are the results of this for aspiring TV writers?
CC: Your novel, 'Storm and Grace', was praised for its urgency and its poetry. How do you maintain these two, perhaps somewhat opposed, qualities in your work?
CC: How long have you been involved with running literary events?
Plotting and Structure for Beginners
CC: Which comes first for you, plot or character?
Melanie Cheng is a writer and general practitioner of Chinese-Australian heritage. Her short story collection Australia Day won the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and was shortlisted for the 2017 Reading Prize for New Australian Fiction and the 2018 Indie Book Award for debut fiction. The short story ‘White Sparrow’ was published in the collection Shibboleth and Other Stories, which contains the best stories from the 2016 Margaret River Short Story Competition.
CC: You studied Criminology and now work for Victoria Police. What came first, your interest in crime and policing or a desire to write crime fiction?
CC: You won the Holding Redlich pitching competition awarded by the South Pacific Association of Film and Television. As an author you’ve appeared on Bert Newton's 'Good Morning Australia' and Margaret Throsby's 'Desert Island Disks', as well as being extensively profiled in all major newspapers. To what, in broad terms, do you attribute your success?
CC: Congratulations on your forthcoming essay collection 'Blueberries'. Can you tell us a little bit about the ideas that shaped the collection?
