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Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript (2015-)
or Dorothy Hewett Award
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
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History

'UWA Publishing, in partnership with Copyright Agency Limited and ABC 720 Perth, has established a new award [in 2015, first awarded in 2016] for an unpublished manuscript.

The award has been established as a response to the changes to the WA Premier’s Book Awards announced earlier this year. Along with the majority of the Western Australian arts community, UWA Publishing expressed the view that the loss of $65,000 per annum and move to a biennial format undervalues the arts in a state that has produced some of the nation’s finest writers and thinkers.

'The aim of the Dorothy Hewett Award is to support literary talent both in and related to Western Australia, and to celebrate the life and writing of a stalwart Australian radical. The award will be an annual fixture designed to be a catalyst for writers beginning or furthering their professional writing careers.' (Source: http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/pages/the-dorothy-hewett-award-for-an-unpublished-manuscript )

Notes

  • In 2017, the year of award was aligned with the year of announcement, 'skipping' 2017.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2023

winner y separately published work icon Depth of Field Kirsty Iltners , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2024 27659264 2024 single work novel

'In photography, you don’t get to have it all. You are always making choices, always making sacrifices.

'To capture the light.

'Tom’s longest-standing commitment is his run-down house Mayfield, which hasn’t been the same since Adeline. He’s stuck in the past drowning his sorrows in too many bottles of wine and an unfulfilling photography business. Unable to move on Tom is treading water in a low-commitment relationship. The only problem ― she isn’t Adeline.

'Lottie is living with her baby, Coral, in a cramped flat above a fish and chip shop. Struggling to make ends meet, all she wants is to find connection ― with her distant mother, the parent’s group, her old school friends, but Lottie straddles too many different worlds to quite fit into any of them. She doesn’t have much, but at least her and Coral have each other.

'Told through alternating perspectives, Kirsty Iltners’ debut novel examines the lives of two isolated individuals to reveal the fragility of life and the fallibility of our memories. Winner of the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award, Depth of Field is a gripping novel in which the mechanisms of photography are allowed to falter just enough to expose how selective and unreliable our memories are, especially when parts of the truth are left out of the frame.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2022

winner y separately published work icon Eta Draconis Brendan Ritchie , Nedlands : UWA Publishing , 2023 25940829 2023 single work novel

'Elora is leaving her hometown for university. Leaving behind friends, family, and safety to follow her dream of studying theatre while she still has the chance.

'Together, Elora and her older sister, Vivienne, set out by road for the city and the upcoming semester. The relationship between them is fractured and fading, turned upside down by Eta Draconis: the violent meteor shower that has rained across Earth since the beginning of their adolescence. In a land scarred by craters and shockwaves, to travel anywhere is to risk everything. As the showering intensifies and their way forward becomes threatened, the sisters are forced to confront their relationship and recalibrate their hopes for the future. Do they return home or press on in the face of the meteors? Can life ever be normal with the world crashing down all around you?

'Eta Draconis is an epic story about two resilient sisters who are determined to live their life in a world on the brink of destruction.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2021

joint winner y separately published work icon Hopeless Kingdom Kgshak Akec , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2022 24486111 2022 single work novel

'Akita's family have always kept moving to survive. Sudan to Cairo. Cairo to Sydney. Sydney to Geelong. At each new place, challenges test and break Akita, her four siblings and her parents. Just when eight-year-old Akita is feeling settled at her new school and community in Sydney for the first time in her life, her parents decide to relocate to Geelong to be closer to their Sudanese relatives. The move is the beginning of a downward spiral that threatens to unravel the fabric of their family and any hope for finding peace and belonging.

'Told through the interchanging perspectives of Akita and her mother, Taresai, this coming of age story shines a light on the generational curses of trauma, and gives voice to the silent heartache of searching for acceptance in an adopted society which isn't able to look past the surface of skin colour. Individually, the female narrators experience racism, rejection and despair, but together their narratives reveal a resilience of spirit and determination to transcend expectations of what a daughter, a sister, and a mother can be.

'Hopeless Kingdom is the winner of the 2020 Dorothy Hewett Award. Inspired by the author's own experience of migration from Africa to Australia, this story signals a powerful new voice in Australian writing.'  (Publication summary)

joint winner y separately published work icon Banjawarn Joshua Kemp , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2022 23605018 2022 single work novel

'Garreth Hoyle is a true crime writer whose destructive love affair with hallucinogenic drugs has sent him searching for ghosts in the unforgiving mallee desert of Western Australia. Heading north through Kalgoorlie, he attempts to score off old friends from his shearing days on Banjawarn Station. His journey takes an unexpected detour when he discovers an abandoned ten-year-old girl and decides to return her to her estranged father in Leonora, instead of alerting authorities. Together they begin the road trip from hell through the scorched heart of the state’s northern goldfields.

'Love, friendship and hope are often found in the strangest places, but forgiveness is never simple, and the past lies buried just beneath the blood red topsoil. The only question is whether Hoyle should uncover it, or run as fast as his legs can take him.

'Banjawarn is an unsettling debut from Josh Kemp. Echoing Cormac McCarthy’s haunting border trilogy and narrative vernacular that recalls the sparse lyricism of Randolph Stow and Tim Winton, this is a darkly funny novel that earns its place amongst the stable of Australian gothic literature.' (Publication summary)

as 'Stranger Places'.

Year: 2020

winner y separately published work icon Where the Fruit Falls Karen Wyld , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2020 19910013 2020 single work novel

'An ancient ocean roars under the red dirt. Hush. Be still for just a moment. Hear its thundering waves crashing on unseen shores.

'Spanning four generations, with a focus on the 1960s and 70s, an era of rapid social change and burgeoning Aboriginal rights, Where the Fruit Falls is a re-imagining of the epic Australian novel.

'Brigid Devlin, a young Aboriginal woman, and her twin daughters navigate a troubled nation of First Peoples, settlers and refugees – all determined to shape a future on stolen land. Leaving the sanctuary of her family’s apple orchard, Brigid sets off with no destination and a willy wagtail for company. As she moves through an everchanging landscape, Brigid unravels family secrets to recover what she’d lost – by facing the past, she finally accepts herself. Her twin daughters continue her journey with their own search for self-acceptance, truth and justice.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2019

winner y separately published work icon Rogue Intensities Angela Rockel , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2019 17186040 2019 single work autobiography 'Rogue Intensities is a memoir grounded in Tasmania, with a richness of storytelling which emerges from the space between human, nature and environmental threads. It manages to straddle the intimate and the universal with ease a great deal of delight. The exploration of the Australian landscape through prose is a core tenet of Australian literature and the UWAP has been successful in finding a shining example of this in Rogue intensities. This work successfully adds to this canon in a way that extends it and enriches writing alongside it.' (Publication summary)

Works About this Award

Interview with Julie Watts Alexis Late (interviewer), 2020 single work interview
— Appears in: Writ Poetry Review , February no. 4 2020;
'Julie Watts is a Western Australian writer. She has been published in various National and International journals and anthologies. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize, won The Blake Poetry Prize 2017 and The Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript 2018. Her second poetry collection, Legacy, was published by UWA Publishing in November, 2018. She took a moment to talk to us about the story behind her Blake poem, what wasps reveal to us about human frailty, the connotations of the word ‘disarm’, the difficult origins of her book’s titular poem ‘Legacy of a Suicide’, and how images in poetry can offer a non-judgemental critique of societal issues.' (Introduction)
Extinctions Given New Lease of Life Amanda Ellis , 2016 single work column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 23 February 2016; (p. 6)
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