Inaugural Varuna — New England Writers' Centre Fellowship shortlist
Announcing the shortlist for the inaugural Varuna/New England Writers’ Centre Fellowship
In partnership with Varuna, The National Writers’ House, and with the generous support of the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, the New England Writers’ Centre is delighted to announce the shortlist of finalists for the inaugural Varuna/New England Writers’ Centre Fellowship.
The Fellowship is open to all writers, at any stage of their career, and working in any literary genre, either currently living in the New England region or who have previously lived there for at least five years. The judges, all literary professionals based in New England, looked at the quality of the submitted work, the potential of the project, and the benefit of the Fellowship residency to writers. They commented that the overall standard of submissions was high but that the three shortlisted works stood out significantly.
In no particular order, the shortlist is as follows:
Bloodwood, by Anna Thomson (Armidale): a paranormal fantasy novel praised by judges as being compelling and well-imagined, with a strong sense of pace and rhythm and skilful adaptation of standard tropes.
The Carnival is Over, by Greg Woodland (Sydney, but grew up in New England): a rural crime novel praised by judges as excellent, with a well-thought-out plot, original and convincingly flawed characters and an engaging tone.
The Shape of Sound, by Fiona Murphy (Tamworth): a memoir about the author’s experience of Deafness, praised by the judges as being captivating, with vivid writing which powerfully renders the author’s experience, and research skilfully woven throughout.
Shortlisted works will now proceed to the next stage of judging, with assessors from Varuna selecting the final winner, with an announcement to be made in early December.
The Fellowship, to be taken up in 2020, will offer the winner a week’s inspirational writing residency in the beautiful surroundings of Varuna, in the Blue Mountains, and include full board and accommodation at Varuna, funds towards travel, a one-on-one consultation with a Varuna expert and more. Shortlisted finalists will also receive a year’s free membership of the New England Writers’ Centre, as well as two free workshops of their choice from NEWC’s 2020 program.
We congratulate all three shortlisted finalists on a fantastic achievement in this inaugural year of the Varuna/New England Writers’ Centre Fellowship and thank all entrants for their submissions.
In partnership with Varuna, The National Writers’ House, and with the generous support of the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, the New England Writers’ Centre is delighted to announce the shortlist of finalists for the inaugural Varuna/New England Writers’ Centre Fellowship.
The Fellowship is open to all writers, at any stage of their career, and working in any literary genre, either currently living in the New England region or who have previously lived there for at least five years. The judges, all literary professionals based in New England, looked at the quality of the submitted work, the potential of the project, and the benefit of the Fellowship residency to writers. They commented that the overall standard of submissions was high but that the three shortlisted works stood out significantly.
In no particular order, the shortlist is as follows:
Bloodwood, by Anna Thomson (Armidale): a paranormal fantasy novel praised by judges as being compelling and well-imagined, with a strong sense of pace and rhythm and skilful adaptation of standard tropes.
The Carnival is Over, by Greg Woodland (Sydney, but grew up in New England): a rural crime novel praised by judges as excellent, with a well-thought-out plot, original and convincingly flawed characters and an engaging tone.
The Shape of Sound, by Fiona Murphy (Tamworth): a memoir about the author’s experience of Deafness, praised by the judges as being captivating, with vivid writing which powerfully renders the author’s experience, and research skilfully woven throughout.
Shortlisted works will now proceed to the next stage of judging, with assessors from Varuna selecting the final winner, with an announcement to be made in early December.
The Fellowship, to be taken up in 2020, will offer the winner a week’s inspirational writing residency in the beautiful surroundings of Varuna, in the Blue Mountains, and include full board and accommodation at Varuna, funds towards travel, a one-on-one consultation with a Varuna expert and more. Shortlisted finalists will also receive a year’s free membership of the New England Writers’ Centre, as well as two free workshops of their choice from NEWC’s 2020 program.
We congratulate all three shortlisted finalists on a fantastic achievement in this inaugural year of the Varuna/New England Writers’ Centre Fellowship and thank all entrants for their submissions.
About the authors
Anna Thomson, author of Bloodwood
Anna Thomson (writing as Anna Bell) is a freelance editor and writer and has an honours degree in literature. She has three published short stories, White Christmas, Santa’s Little Helper and The King of Winter in anthologies by Christmas Press. Anna lives in New England with her husband and a giant homicidal house plant. 
Fiona Murphy, author of The Shape of Sound
Fiona Murphy is a Deaf poet and essayist. Her work has appeared in Overland, Kill Your Darlings, The Lifted Brow, Big Issue, amongst others. In 2019, she was awarded the Monash Prize for creative writing. Fiona is currently working on a collection of essays about Deafness. She lives in New England. Website: http://www.fimurphywriter.com/ This project is supported by the Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund
The Copyright Agency is a not-for-profit rights management organisation that ensures artists, writers and publishers are fairly rewarded for the reproduction of their work. Our Cultural Fund provides grants to creative individuals and organisations for a diverse range of projects which aim to enrich Australian cultural life.
|
Greg Woodland, author of The Carnival is Over
I come from a screenwriting and filmmaking background. I won several awards for my films Tripe, Sharky’s Party, Green, Your Turn and feature documentary Chasing Birds, all of which screened in national and international film festivals, and were broadcasted by ABC, SBS, BBC, Channel 4, Fox and others. I’ve been a script consultant to Australian film funding bodies for 20 years and have been running independent script development business, Script Central, since 2003. I’ve also taught screenwriting at Macquarie University, University of Technology Sydney, AFTRS and Metro Screen. After several failed attempts to get my feature scripts into production, I started writing novels in 2012. My first book, Pangs, won two Varuna fellowships, though remains unpublished. My second novel, The Night Whistler, the first book in a proposed rural crime series set in the fictional New England town of Moorabool in the late 1960’s and ‘70s, will be published by Text Publishing in August 2020. The Carnival is Over is the second book in that series (which I’m currently halfway through). I spent a large part of my childhood in the 1960s growing up in South Tamworth, where my dad was a commercial traveller and my mum a housewife bringing up five young sons on her own. After a brief stint finishing high school in Sydney and Tweed Heads, I moved to Armidale to study Zoology at UNE, wisely chucking it in halfway through my third year. After another year as a dishwasher, brick-cleaner and guitarist in a punk rock band, I left Armidale for Sydney in 1979, where I’ve lived ever since. I’ve returned many times to the New England area and still have close ties and friends from Armidale. The inspiration for the first book came from a story my mother told me some years back of the year she spent fighting off a mysterious nuisance caller and stalker, and keeping it secret from me and my little brothers when our father was away on business, often for weeks at a time. I plan to revisit the town of Moorabool and its characters for new crime situations as my two protagonists grow older; and the boy grows from troubled youth into a local copper, and his mentor the detective grows older… though not necessarily wiser. |
