Christy Collins’ novella The End of Seeing won the Viva La Novella Prize in 2015 and was shortlisted for the Colin Roderick Award and the Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Prize. Her novel The Price of Two Sparrows was published in 2021 by Affirm Press. Christy was an Asialink Arts Resident in Sapporo in 2017 and a resident at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai in 2024. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Tasmania and lives in Melbourne/Naarm.
Christy's manuscript Another Sky has been shortlisted for the 2026 Dorothy Hewett Award. In this short interview, with Mabel Gibson, Christy Collins shares how it feels to be shortlisted and their advice for writers looking to submit to the Dorothy Hewett Award in the future.
About Another Sky: Sloane has a dream job, travelling the world looking for experiences to preserve in a virtual reality museum. But when an old colleague unexpectedly shows up, and it seems like the dream might be about to end, it’s time for Sloane to figure out what’s next or risk being sent home to a life she wants to leave behind.
Mabel Gibson interviewed Christy about her shortlisting:
How do you feel being shortlisted for the 2026 DHA?
I’m surprised and delighted.
How long have you been working on Another Sky and what made you submit to the DHA this year?
I’ve been working on it for nine years. I submitted it this year because I had the sense that if it didn’t find a home soon, it might be time to put it in the metaphorical drawer and start something new. I also hoped that sending it out into the world would help me to see the manuscript more clearly again. Like how the moment you send an email you’ve read five times, you immediately see the spelling mistake.
Although Another Sky is a work of fiction the themes and ideas are relevant to our reality, what drew you to exploring these themes?
When I started writing Another Sky, I was living in a place where I understood very little of what was going on around me. Everything was confusing, everything was a question, and most of the questions I’d never get an answer to. One of the most endlessly interesting experiences in life, is that of being a stranger in a strange land. It forces you to take a different approach to the world: experimental, humble, reflexively apologetic, and a bit separated from the reality everyone else is living in. I think it was that feeling of displacement that made me want to explore questions of reality and of travel.
Do you have any advice for writers who have been working on a manuscript and are considering submitting their work into the DHA in the future?
The DHA is a prize that has a track record of discovering works that might be a little unusual, complex, or ambitious. So, even if you think your work sits in between genres or grapples with challenging material, the DHA might be a good place to try your luck. The shortlisting feels like a little bit of magic, but someone has to be on the list, and it might just be you.
Check out our interviews with the other 5 shortlisted writers: