Our prize winners for December 2016

Welcome to our monthly brag about our Writers Victoria community members who have won awards, been shortlisted or longlisted for writing prizes or received industry recognition.

Collective celebrations

The shortlist for the 2017 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards has been announced, with 21 titles in contention in five categories. The titles comprise some of the best fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and writing for young adults produced in Australia in the previous year. Among the shortlisted entries were:

Prize For Fiction
‘The Healing Party’ by Micheline Lee, tutor

Prize For Non-Fiction
‘The Hate Race’ by Maxine Beneba Clarke, tutor
‘The Fighter’ by Arnold Zable, Honorary Member and tutor

Prize For Poetry
‘Carrying the World’ by Maxine Beneba Clarke, tutor

Highly commended were:

Fiction
‘Our Magic Hour’ by Jennifer Down, member

Writing for Young Adults
‘Frankie’ by Shivaun Plozza, tutor and member

Publisher Hardie Grant Egmont announced the five writers who have been shortlisted from nearly 160 entries for the 2016 Ampersand Prize. The shortlist includes:

Amelia Mellor, member for ‘Anomalies’ (Young Adult)
Jess Howard, member, for ‘Dead Chatter’ (Young Adult)

The 13 participants selected for the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Emerging Writers and Illustrators Mentorship program have been announced. Among the recipients were:

Emily Stoikovich, member (fiction)
Charlotte Callander, member (Young Adult)
Katerina Craven, member (Young Adult)

The 2016 AusRomToday Reader’s Choice Awards were announced and among the winners were:

Book Of The Year
Juliet M Sampson, Member

Best Established Author
Alli Sinclair, member and tutor

Cover of the Year
Alli Sinclair, member and tutor

The Overland Story Wine Prize winner was announced late last month. The winner was Cameron Weston, member, for his story ‘Sweeping’. Zoë Bradley, member, was one of the runners-up with her story ‘Silver gates’.

Individual celebrations

Dr Leah Kaminsky, member and tutor, has won the 2016 Voss Literary Prize for her debut novel ‘The Waiting Room’. The Voss Literary Prize is awarded to the best novel published in Australia in the previous year, and is managed by the Australian University Heads of English, the peak body for the study of English at Australian universities.

Megan Wallens member, won the 2016 Margaret Hazzard Short Story Award, which is offered by the Society of Women Writers Victoria. In late November, Megan was also awarded a ‘highly commended’ in a short story competition run by Stringybark Short Stories in ACT. The thirty winning entries have been published on-line in a short story anthology entitled ‘Longing for Solitude’. The theme for this competition was “times past”, and entries were required to be based on a true event in Australian history using fiction.