The power of persistence: Author Emily Paull on the Fogarty Literary Award

Earlier this year, I was at the annual Fremantle Press pitch event. I had been asked to prepare a two-minute talk about myself and my book.

Easy, I thought. No problem. I do public speaking all the time. I interviewed Lauren Groff when she came for Perth Writers Festival! I’ve interviewed Stephanie Alexander (which was kind of a big swing because I don’t cook). Earlier this year, I interviewed Isobelle Carmody. I am no stranger to talking in front of a crowd.

But something strange happened when I stepped into the venue. I suddenly realised that I was really, really, limb-shakingly, guts-wobblingly nervous. There I was, networking with all the other Fremantle Press authors, who kept asking me if I was excited for my book to come out, and all I wanted to do was disappear. I may have even let my overwhelm get to me, and maybe, just possibly, I cried a little bit in front of a room full of authors and book professionals.

But here’s the thing. Yes, I was nervous, but I got up there, I did the speech, and I think I did a pretty good job. And once I was done, I sat back down in the audience, and I realised something. There I was, presenting in a line-up of authors that included Julia Lawrinson, whose book Skating the Edge was one of the first Fremantle Press titles I ever owned. It included Mark Greenwood, who came out to my PEAC class on creative writing when I was in primary school to talk about his book on Lasseter’s Reef. The line-up also included Deb Fitzpatrick, who edited a very early version The Distance Between Dreams, and whose kindness and encouragement spurred me on in my early twenties.

All of these wonderful writers who had played a part in my writing journey, and here I was, standing alongside them, as their peer.

I had to take a moment to let that thought sink in, because it was pretty cool.

I have wanted to be a Fremantle Press author for as long as I knew that they existed. I have always been a reader, and always written, but holding a Fremantle Press book in my hands always felt special. Fremantle Press books taught me that literary life did not always have to take place in far-off places, and that stories about places familiar to me were worth telling.

I first sent them a manuscript in 2007, when it was still the done thing to print your entire manuscript off and mail it with a stamped, self-addressed envelope. I still have the letter I received acknowledging receipt of my manuscript and letting me know that it would take about three weeks to be assessed. Being 16 and incredibly naïve about the world of publishing, I wrote in my journal above where I glued in the letter, Oh My God… it’s happening. It was not in fact, happening, though I did receive a very kind letter letting me down gently from the publisher several months later.

But I’m nothing if not persistent.

By the time I entered the Fogarty Literary Award in 2023, it would have been either the third or the fourth time that I had submitted this particular story for consideration by Fremantle Press. I thought that if I changed the title, the book might slip by unnoticed. On the night that the Award was presented, a particularly freezing night in May of 2023 as I rushed off the stage after the announcement in search of my coat and a more private place to cry (bit of a theme going on here…) I was intercepted by Georgia Richter who told me that Fremantle Press still wanted to publish my book. Through big, shaking sobs, I said, ‘I’ve sent it to you so many times, and I tried to change the title so you wouldn’t know it was the same book,’ and Georgia smiled and said, ‘I know.’

As you may have gathered from that story, I did not win the 2023 Fogarty Literary Award. That honour went to the amazing Katherine Allum, whose novel The Skeleton House came out last year, and is a really great (but devastating) read. But I still kind of feel like a winner. Is that corny? Maybe. If I had not been on that 2023 shortlist, I would not have met my fellow shortlistees, some of whom I have since become friends with, and whose advice and support I value very much.  And without the opportunity presented by the Fogarty Literary Award, I might have felt too disheartened to try my hand again at becoming a Fremantle Press author.

I see the existence of an award like the Fogarty as a commitment to launching careers. We have already seen 2021 winner Brooke Dunnell and 2019 shortlistee Emma Young publish their second novels, and Michael Burrows, who was also shortlisted for the 2019 Award, was recently a finalist for the Australian Fiction Prize. The Fogarty is an award that values the quality of writing, regardless of what genres are currently trending, and the reward for readers is that we get to experience the joy of a groundbreaking book like the inaugural winner, The History of Mischief by Rebecca Higgie. Now that the Vogel Award is no more, I think this may be the only prize for a novel-length manuscript written by a young Australian writer, and the fact that it is an Award dedicated to unearthing and nurturing Western Australian talent makes it all the more special. The Vogel gave us Tim Winton—who will the Fogarty Literary Award have given us in 30 year’s time? I can’t wait to find out.

If it had not been for the encouragement of the Fogarty Literary Award, both in 2021 when I was highly commended for one book, and then in 2023 when I made the shortlist, I might have given up on ever publishing another book. All writers need encouragement, for what is a writer without a reader? The award provided hope at exactly the right time, gave me that next push, and I’m now more committed than ever to make a career out of this writing business.

So why should you read The Distance Between Dreams? It’s a work of historical fiction, a ‘wrong side of the tracks’ love story set in Fremantle during the Second World War. It follows a young working class boy named Winston Keller whose whole way of seeing the world is turned on its head when he sneaks into a party in the rich bit of East Fremantle with his best friend, Lachie. He meets this girl named Sarah Willis. Sarah’s this confident, funny, magnetic sort of girl who wants to be an actress just like Jean Harlow, and Winston is a very practical person who doesn’t question that he needs to go to work and help pay the rent. In his free time he likes to go out and sit at the Round House and do some sketching, but he had never in a million years considered that sketching could be more than just his hobby.  He starts to resist the pattern his life has fallen into as he and Sarah start dating and she encourages him to aim higher than working in a factory for the rest of his life. Winston realises he’s falling for her, but he learns that his father and Sarah’s father know each other from a long time ago, and they aren’t exactly friends. When a huge secret about something that happened between the two families twenty years earlier is revealed, and the Second World War tears the lovers apart, they have to find their way back to one another, or find a way to move on. This book has a little bit of everything. It’s got Aussie Rules football, it’s got Shakespeare, it’s got a section set on the Thai Burma Railway, it’s got a very sexy American submariner, it’s got local Fremantle landmarks… I won’t spoil it any more for you, but it’s a book that has lived in just my brain for the longest time, and I am excited now to think it is out in the world.  

I want to thank Annie Fogarty and the Fogarty Foundation for supporting the Fogarty Literary Award, and I am so excited to see who the new writers are who will be joining the ‘Fogarty Alumni’ in 2025. My book is all about the importance of dreams, and the irony is not lost on me that publishing it with Fremantle Press is my dream come true.