Five Years of Perseverance: Howard McKenzie-Murray’s City of Fremantle Hungerford Award story
Howard McKenzie-Murray is one of four writers shortlisted for the 2024 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award and in the running to win a $15,000 cash prize from the City of Fremantle, a publishing contract with Fremantle Press and a writing fellowship at the Centre for Stories. We asked Howard to tell us more about his writing journey.
Describe your manuscript
Far From Wonderful is somewhere between a coming-of-age and a journey-home story set in Perth and narrated by 21-year-old med student Maud Tarkington. Maud brings you with her through a 24-hour period spanning her 21st birthday and her brother’s funeral. It’s a story about the unrushable, unsexy, awkward and messy grieving process and its collateral damage.
The narrator is on the run from herself, from the sadness and anxiety of life, and you’re with her as she struggles to stop that runaway momentum and turn back and face herself. But I hope the manuscript is every bit as funny as it is sad. Maud’s self-deprecating and sardonic personality, her affinity for exaggeration, her rants, her zeroing-in on trivialities and her honesty gives the heavy themes a lightness. At heart, it’s about all the everyday things that make life worth living, about the rapture of being alive and the other side of grief – gratitude.
What inspired you to write your manuscript?
What inspired me mostly to write the manuscript was the voice of the narrator, the 21-year-old Maud. Her voice got under my skin. So I tried to do it justice. And she was fun. It was fun knocking around this city with her (in my imagination) and trying to see life through her eyes. That was a daily inspiration. I had a lot of false-starts with this manuscript and a lot of the early inspirations faded out, but the truth of the narrator’s voice remained. So I stuck it out. I also started with the megalomaniac urge to get down the way life feels to me. The two came together … and five years later that’s the book.
How long have you been writing your manuscript?
I’ve been carting this manuscript around with me for five years – rewriting it, chopping parts away, rearranging, working in intense bursts and then letting it moulder away for months.
What does it mean to be shortlisted?
It’s like catching hold of a tail-wind. The encouragement of having your work recognised – you can’t underestimate that. For me, the practice of writing itself is the reward, but ultimately you want to reach people – you want to offer the skimpy handful of flowers you’ve been nurturing in private up to the world and say ‘Hope you like it’. So to be recognised by your favourite, local publishing house is – as my mother will definitely say when I tell her – a real feather in your cap.
About the author
Howard McKenzie-Murray is a writer born on Whadjuk land in the settler-state of WA. He writes fiction and for the theatre. After studying languages and philosophy at UWA and Murdoch University, he lived abroad and travelled widely. These days, he lives in Fremantle, travels when possible, reads, gardens and practises zen.
Follow Howard’s journey on Instagram: @_howardmckenziemurray_
The 2024 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award will be announced at the Fremantle Arts Centre on Thursday 24 October at 6.00 pm. The ceremony will be co-hosted by Molly Schmidt, winner of the 2022 City of Hungerford Award for Salt River Road. Tickets are free. RSVP here
Download the City of Fremantle Hungerford Award judges report
