Unanimous decision on Vogel award winner Nell Pierce

The prize is one of Australia’s most prestigious. All of this year’s judges agreed on the winner, Nell Pierce.

Author Nell Pierce, pictured with her month-old baby Mo is the winner of the Vogel literary prize. Picture: Aaron Francis

The winner of 2022 The Australian-Vogel Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript has been ­announced … and warmest congratulations go to Melbourne’s Nell Pierce, 34.

The prize is one of Australia’s most prestigious. Past winners include Tim Winton and Kate Grenville. It cannot ever be easy for judges to whittle entries down to three for a shortlist.

That said, Pierce’s entry, A Place Near Eden, this year made every judge’s shortlist, and every judge also agreed that it should win.

Pierce wrote the bulk of the winning manuscript while living in New York. The distance from her home country gave her ­perspective; and her work, as a New York-based literary agent, honed her practical skills.

Pierce left Melbourne for the first time when she was just 18 months old, after her father, a radiologist, got a job in Canberra. She returned to Victoria to study arts-law at the University of Melbourne. After graduating, she worked as a legal associate to two judges at the Family Court of Australia, an experience that gave Pierce some of the grit she needed to write the hardest parts of her book, which covers separation, divorce and family trauma.

A PLACE NEAR EDEN: Read an extract

“I was exposed to relationship breakdowns that were brutal and I knew these people had, presumably, once loved each other. And the love had not been enough,” she says.

“I was able to see how they experienced the same story different ways, how they could have different versions of the same events. That to me, was a big insight, the tension between love and conflict, and the way our memory of events can be distorted by our emotional experience.”

Pierce moved to New York after graduation to study at The New School. Like so many young writers before her, she found the city intoxicating.

“I moved with my partner (Mark Chu, 32, who took her ­author photograph). We had a tiny little flat, and we were able to have the adventure together.”

Her lecturers included published writers, one of whom introduced Pierce to his New York literary agent, who gave her a job reading manuscripts.

“It’s true what you’ve heard,” she says. “There was a huge volume of manuscripts coming in, and I was very junior, but it was my job to try to sort through some of them (the same process once led to the publication of JK Rowling’s now famous Harry Potter books).

“Because I was writing my own manuscript, I understood the time and energy that must have gone into every one of the books that came our way, and I wanted to treat them all with love and respect.

“It’s hard, because so many people want to write, and want to be published. I had the dream myself. It’s competitive, it takes a long time, it’s a difficult road, and there’s an element of working on your craft that never ends.

“And then comes luck. And fashion, because some genres (crime) or some topics (wizards or vampires) can be in fashion, and if you’re writing something else, you might miss out, not because your book isn’t good but because the market isn’t right.”

Pierce proved to have a good eye for a story. During her time in New York, she was able to represent “some incredible authors, and it’s stressful to try to name just a few, because there were so many, but Cadwell Turnbull (The Lesson) was writing really smart science fiction; and I worked with Elizabeth Hand (Curious Toys); and I was also honoured to co-represent William Gibson (a central figure in the cyberpunk movement).”

Then came the pandemic. Pierce and Chu tried to keep working under lockdown conditions, “finding space to be on the phone, or writing while he was painting. We managed. But then Mark’s visa was about to expire, so we had to come home, and weren’t able to go back (because of Covid) and then … well, I got pregnant.”

Yes, she has produced a baby and a book in the same year.

Indeed, Pierce’s daughter, little Mo, was born at the start of April. She received her first copies of A Place Near Eden a few days after the birth.

By chance, the manuscript includes a character who falls pregnant. “I think I hadn’t quite understood, before I got pregnant, what the experience would be like, and how many medical appointments there might be,” she laughs.

“I didn’t understand, in one scene, for example, how sick she might be, or how tired. But I had written her as a strong, adventurous pregnant woman, and I have kept her very strong. I didn’t have to change too much.”

In assessing the work, the Vogel judges were deeply impressed by the sense of place. In her notes, judge Kate Adams said: “The author’s evocation of landscape, particularly the coast, is strong – this is a compelling and original read with much to share about the flaws in memory.”

Hsu-Ming Teo, a previous winner of the prize, agreed: “This is a skilfully written, insightful novel, a recognition of how unattainable the truth is … Memories are represented vibrantly through the senses – intense, brief bursts of sight, texture, and especially smell – and then their foundations dissolve as the narrator acknowledges her inability to interpret these flashes of the past with any kind of certainty … My first choice by far.”

Pierce felt the importance, in writing about Australia, “of getting the sense of place right. That said, it’s not a specific place. It’s a beach. It’s inspired by the time I spent at Tathra, NSW, when I was a child, but it’s not Tathra.

“It’s a beach town that I think, or hope, many people will recognise.”

While some of this year’s Vogel entries had Covid themes, Pierce was not tempted to add any pandemic experience to the narrative.

“In some ways, it was good to have the bulk of the work done before Covid,” she says.

“I had committed to the themes and the characters, and I was able to resist going back. I had already decided that it was set about 10 years into the past … I didn’t want it tied specifically to any time.”

She had to work quickly to get the book ready for publication, before her baby was born.

“The Vogel book is edited on a fast, firm deadline. It’s difficult for everyone and I’m so impressed by the work that has been put in. I feel so extremely lucky to have had such experienced editors working on it.”

Now both book and baby Mo are here, and Pierce is “feeling extremely lucky and excited about the future”.

A Place Near Eden by Nell Pierce (Allen & Unwin), winner of the 2022 The Australian-Vogel’s Literary Award, is published today.