University's Australian Centre Literary Awards announced
SIX talented Australian writers have shared in $65,000 worth of literary prizes from the University of Melbourne's Australian Centre in the Faculty of Arts.
Samson and Delilahscriptwriter Warwick Thornton took home the richest of the five national cultural awards presented on 27 August. Thornton won the $25,000 Kate Challis RAKA Award for best script by an indigenous writer. The judges praised Samson and Delilah as "one of the most important scripts to be produced in Australian film history".
Lily Chan received the $15,000 Peter Blazey Fellowship for a work in progress in the non-fiction fields of biography, autobiography and life-writing for a memoir of her grandmother that spans three countries - World War II Japan, post-war China and regional Australia. Sara Knox's The Orphan Gunner and Shirley Walker's The Ghost at the Wedding: A true story shared the $10,000 Asher Award for books by women which carry an anti-war theme.
Elizabeth Campbell was awarded the $10,000 Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize, which this year supports an Australian poet to visit Ireland (the prize alternates annually to support an Irish poet's visit to Australia). Gretchen Shirm was awarded the $5,000 DJ 'Dinny' O'Hearn Memorial Fellowship, for emergent writers.
Pictured: An image from Warwick Thornton's Samson and Delilah.