UTAS authors vie for 2013 Tasmanian Literary Prizes
Pete Hay, Natasha Cica and Rohan Wilson head alumni-dominated shortlists
University of Tasmania staff members are among the short-listed authors for this year’s Tasmanian Literary Prizes.
Last Days of the Mill, by Dr Pete Hay, a Research Fellow with the School of Geography and Environmental Studies, and artist/alumnus Tony Thorne is in the running for the $25,000 Tasmania Book Prize, for the best book with Tasmanian content in any genre.
The Director of the Inglis Clark Centre for Civil Society, Associate Professor Natasha Cica, has been shortlisted for the $5,000 Margaret Scott Prize (best book by a Tasmanian writer) for Pedder Dreaming: Olegas Truchanas and A Lost Tasmanian Wilderness.
Rohan Wilson, who won The Australian / Vogel's Literary Award in 2011 for his first novel The Roving Party and is now a member of the casual teaching staff in the School of English, is a contender for both the Tasmania Book Prize and the Margaret Scott Prize.
Renowned UTAS alumni to be shortlisted include James Boyce (the Tasmanian Book Prize and the Margaret Scott Prize, for 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia) and Amanda Lohrey (Margaret Scott Prize, for Reading Madame Bovary). UTAS graduate Adrienne Eberhard's book This Woman was also mentioned.
In contention for the $5,000 University of Tasmania Prize (best new unpublished literary work by an emerging Tasmanian writer) are alumnus Ben Walter (Lurching), along with Katherine Johnson (Kubla) and Leigh Swinbourne (Shadow in the Forest).
The 2013 judges are author and UTAS lecturer in English Dr Lisa Fletcher; social scientist and author Ross Honeywill and the managing editor of Island magazine Rachel Edwards.
Winners will be announced at Hobart Town Hall on March 22, a co-presentation between UTAS and Arts Tasmania, during the Days on the Island Festival.