Australia Day: Life stories win Victorian Premier’s writing award
A manuscript that examines contemporary life has won the Victorian Premier’s Award for Unpublished Manuscripts.
A manuscript that examines contemporary Australian life through the themes of family and chance encounters has won the inaugural $15,000 Victorian Premier’s Award for Unpublished Manuscripts.
Australia Day, written by Fitzroy-local Melanie Cheng (pictured), is a collection of short stories that was chosen to win the award from a pool of 118 entries.
Cheng’s work previously has been published in Meanjin, Overland and Griffith Review.
The judging panel said the short fiction of Australia Day “is mature, engaging, structurally sound and beautifully nuanced.
Here is a unique contribution to Australian short fiction.” The two runners-up — Jay Carmichael for his story of fear, loss and alienation, Ironbark; and Susan Johnston for her romantic-comedy, Wildgirl — will receive a Writers Victoria membership and a place on a course of their choosing.
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