Winners Announced
MARION is delighted to announce the winning works from 2023 ACT Notable Book Awards
FICTION - NONFICTION - POETRY - CHILDREN’S
THE ANNE EDGEWORTH WRITERS FELLOWSHIP and THE JUNE SHENFIELD NATIONAL POETRY AWARDS
“Thank you to everyone who celebrated this year’s ACT Notable Book Awards with us. These awards continue to provide an important opportunity for our region’s writing community to come together, celebrate our achievements and recognise new works of note. Congratulations to all those who were shortlisted, commended and awarded within each category.”
The 2024 Anne Edgeworth Fellowship worth $5,000 was awarded to Linda Chen to help her to develop her craft of writing television and film screenplays. The selection committee were impressed by Linda’s complex, high-concept, structurally challenging scripts, which incorporated multiple timelines, false memory arcs, and include shrewd and edgy social and political comment. The award should assist her to achieve her stated aim of achieving a stronger, more consistent and systematic writing process for taking her screenplays from concept outline to script draft to a refined and polished final product.
The June Shenfield Poetry Awards were awarded as follows:
1st Place – Rhian Healy (WA)
2nd Place – Alana Kelsall (VIC)
3rd Place – Rebecca Fleming (ACT)
Linda Chen
Recipient of the Anne Edgeworth Fellowship
Chris Hammer
Fiction Award Winner (Traditional Publisher)
Barbie Robinson and Ian Robertson
Children’s Book Award Winners
POETRY
TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING
WINNER
Penelope Layland, Beloved (Recent Work Press)
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Peter Ramm, Waterlines (Vagabond Press)
SELF-PUBLISHED
WINNER Maurice Nevile, Translating Loss: A haiku collection
NONFICTION
TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING
WINNER
Jan Williams Smith, The Glass Cricket Ball (Big Sky)
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Katrina Marson, Legitimate Sexpectations (Scribe Publications)
SELF-PUBLISHED
WINNER
Helen Topor, Neither King nor Saint
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING
WINNER
Jackie French & Bruce Whatley, Diary of a Rescued Wombat: The untold story (HarperCollins)
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Stephanie Owen Reeder & Astred Hicks, Swifty the Super-Fast Parrot (CSIRO Publishing)
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Irma Gold & Wayne Harris, Seree’s Story (Walker Books Australia)
SELF-PUBLISHED
WINNER
Barbie Robinson & Ian Robertson, Charles the Gallery Dog (For Pity Sake Publishing)
FICTION
TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING
WINNER
Chris Hammer, The Tilt (Allen & Unwin)
SELF-PUBLISHED
WINNER
Tanya Davies, Then Eve
MARION – SPECIAL BOOK AWARD
This award recognises work that demonstrates uniqueness, literary excellence and surpasses genre.
2023 Winner - Dylan Van Den Berg for Whitefella Yella Tree (Currency Press)
Whitefella Yella Tree is an emotionally affecting, imaginative and wildly symbolic love story about two young First Nations men. While set in the nineteenth century, the play has a timeless atmosphere. It addresses the experience of violent colonialism in a way that is moving and utterly original.
