Brendan Ritchie is awarded the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.
UWA Publishing, with thanks to the Copyright Agency, is excited to announce the winner of the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript: Brendan Ritchie for his manuscript Eta Draconis.
Brendan Ritchie will receive a publishing contract and manuscript development with UWA Publishing and $10,000 prize money.
Eta Draconis will be released in 2023.
The judging panel for the 2022 Award was Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Leni Shilton, Astrid Edwards and Eleanor Hurt. They noted that the events that have shaped our experiences in the last two years have provided fertile material for Australian writers. More information on the 2022 award can be found on the UWA Publishing website.
In 2021 the Award received over 350 entries and the Judges announced joint winners, with two young fiction writers sharing the award. Joshua Kemp’s Banjawarn (submitted as ‘Strangest Places’) was released in February 2022 and Kgshak Akec’s Hopeless Kingdom was released in August 2022. Previous winners include Karen Wyld’s Where the Fruit Falls and the inaugural winner, Extinctions by Josephine Wilson, which went on to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
UWA Publishing thanks the Copyright Agency for its ongoing support for the Dorothy Hewett Award and congratulates Brendan Ritchie on his achievement.
Dorothy Hewett (1923-2002) is considered one of Australia’s most important writers, her work challenging the norms of 20th century Australian culture. Hewett made her mark as a poet, playwright and novelist. In 1986, Hewett was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her services to literature. Hewett won the Western Australian Premier’s Poetry Award in 1994 and 1995 for her collections Peninsula and Collected Poems: 1940-1995.
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