THE DOROTHY HEWETT AWARD FOR AN UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT

The Award is currently closed for entries. The award will reopen in November 2023.

 

Dorothy Hewett (1923-2002) is considered one of Australia’s most important writers whose work challenged the norms of twentieth century Australian culture. 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.

The Dorothy Hewett Award is a national award for unpublished manuscripts and is run annually in the month of November. The Award is open to all writers who have completed a manuscript and are seeking publication regardless if you have been published before or not. The work must be currently unpublished and belonging to one of these genres: fiction, narrative nonfiction, poetry, verse novel or memoir. The winner will receive a cash prize of $10,000, courtesy of Copyright Agency, and will be offered a publishing contract by UWA Publishing.

The winner of the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award is Kirsty Iltners for her manuscript Depth of Field. The 2022 Award winner was Brendan Ritchie for his manuscript Eta Draconis. The 2021 joint Award winners were Kgshak Akec for her novel, Hopeless Kingdom, and Josh Kemp for his novel, Banjawarn (submitted as Strangest Places). The inaugural winner, Extinctions by Josephine Wilson, went on to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Terms and conditions can be viewed here. Please direct any queries to marketing-uwap@uwa.edu.au.