Category: Awards

Hello and welcome to December. In what’s been a tough year for so many, we are very happy to report some good news this month. Congratulations are in order for three wonderful Fremantle Press creators.

Just days after receiving the Australian Mental Health Prize and right in the middle of NAIDOC Week 2020, Fremantle Press First Nations children’s book writer and illustrator Helen Milroy was named the WA state recipient of Australian of the Year 2021.

The Future Keepers by Nandi Chinna is one five poetry collections in the running to win a Prime Minister’s Literary Award. Fremantle Press author Meg McKinlay also made the cut in the children’s literature section. Designed to celebrate exceptional Australian literary talent, 30 books were chosen from 562 entries across six categories. Chinna and McKinlay […]

Karrinyup author Maria Papas has won the 2020 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award for her manuscript I Belong to the Lake. She takes home a $15,000 cash prize and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press.

Joanna Morrison’s manuscript, Still Dark, is shortlisted for the 2020 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award. If she wins, she’ll secure herself a publishing contract with Fremantle Press and a $15,000 cash prize from the City of Fremantle.

Jo Morrison began her writing career as a journalist, first in Perth and then in Fremantle. She soon realised she wanted to write fiction instead of news, although she contends that in some ways the two forms are not that different. While journalism is by definition factual, setting it well apart from fiction, both forms […]

Sharron Booth was born in Yorkshire and emigrated with her family to Western Australia in the 1970s. Her fiction and creative non-fiction have been published in The Australian, Southerly, LiNQ and other journals, and broadcast on ABC Radio.

Maria Papas’s stories and essays have appeared in a number of Australian and international journals including Griffith Review, Axon, The Letters Page, The West Australian, SBS online and Review of Australian Fiction. In 2011 her play Arbour Day won the Maj Monologues competition.

The Royal Western Australian Historical Society has awarded the Williams / Lee Steere Publications Prize to Dylan Hyde for his book, Art Was Their Weapon: The History of the Perth Workers’ Art Guild. Hyde wins a $1,000 cash prize and the official presentation took place at the Society’s annual general meeting on Wednesday 16 September.

Sharron Booth, Joanna Morrison and Maria Papas are in the running for $15,000 in prize money from the City of Fremantle and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press. All three Western Australian writers are shortlisted for the 2020 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award, which is now in its thirtieth year.

Rebecca Higgie won the inaugural Fogarty Literary Award for her manuscript The History of Mischief back in 2019 at a special ceremony at the ECU Spiegeltent. Chosen from a field of 64 manuscripts by Western Australian writers aged 18 to 35, Higgie won a $20,000 cash prize from the Fogarty Foundation and secured a publishing […]

True West by David Whish-Wilson and River of Salt by Dave Warner are in the running for Australia’s most prestigious crime writing award. Run by the Australian Crime Writers Association since 1995, the Ned Kelly Awards are dedicated to promoting the best crime writing this country has to offer.

Small Steps: A Physio in Ethiopia by Julie Sprigg will be launched by fellow Fremantle Press non-fiction writer Anne-Louise Willoughby at 6.30 pm on Thursday 10 September at the Balmoral Hotel. Supported by Crow Books, Julie, who is based in Victoria Park, will use the event as an opportunity to raise money for the not-for-profit […]

In this interview Rebecca talks about the histories behind the history and how these might be used to stimulate classroom discussions, research and writing activities.

Aussie director Nicholas Verso and producer Tania Chambers optioned the film and television rights to Holden Sheppard’s YA novel Invisible Boys this week. Invisible Boys has already won the 2018 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award, the 2019 Kathleen Mitchell Award and the 2019 Western Australian Premier’s Award for an Emerging Writer, and was shortlisted for […]

Hello and welcome to August. What a month it’s been! Congratulations to our Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards winners and shortlisted authors: Fiona Burrows, Amanda Curtin, Rafeif Ismail, Kathryn Lefroy, Caitlin Maling, Meg McKinlay, Helen Milroy, Holden Sheppard and Ellen van Neerven. We are so proud of you all.

Young adult novelist Holden Sheppard was one of four Fremantle Press authors to be acknowledged in the 2019 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards ceremony at the State Library of Western Australia on Friday 7 August 2020. Holden took home the The Premier’s Prize for an Emerging Writer worth $15,000 for his debut novel, Invisible Boys.

Congratulations to Helen Milroy, author of Backyard Birds and Katie Stewart, author of What Colour is the Sea? for being shortlisted for this year’s Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards.

The US edition of I Love Me, published by Andrews McMeel and written and illustrated by Sally Morgan and Ambelin Kwaymullina, has won a 2019 Silver Nautilus Book Award.

Congratulations to Amanda Curtin, Caitlin Maling, Ellen van Neerven, Fiona Burrows, Helen Milroy, Holden Sheppard, Kathryn Lefroy, Meg McKinlay and Rafeif Ismail, whose wonderful work as writers has taken them a step closer to winning a $15,000 cash prize or a fellowship worth $60,000.

Father of the Lost Boys author and former child soldier Yuot A. Alaak says lived experiences have a lot to teach us. He says giving students the opportunity to enter the lives of refugee children in a war, but from a safe distance, can help build empathy and understanding. In this very special blog post, […]

Readings staff members have selected Holden Sheppard’s Invisible Boys for the shortlist of this year’s Readings Young Adult Book Prize. Established in 2016, the prize recognises exciting emerging voices in Australian young adult literature.

In 2015, I was well and truly sick of my book. The History of Mischief had been lingering with me since 2006, and progress was slow. It was often left for months, only for me to return to it, tinker a bit, and then abandon it for another lengthy period of time. I needed something to […]

The Lost Stone of SkyCity has been shortlisted in the 2019 Aurealis Awards for speculative fiction. The awards, which accept novels, novellas, anthologies, graphic novels and short stories, are given for works of outstanding literary merit and originality that make a significant contribution to the genre of speculative fiction.