A little round-up (ou, une petite histoire)
Text Publishing, home to John Marsden, Bernard Beckett and Beth Montgomery, has announced the winner of its unpublished manuscript prize worth $10,000 and a book deal. Step forward Richard Newsome of Brisbane.Richard edged out a mere 300 other applicants.
Newsome described himself as ‘in equal parts honoured, humbled and hung-over’. He credited the postal service for his win.
If the book is half as funny as his acceptance speech, expect big laffs.
Earlier this week I attempted to post news of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award but the intrawebs refused to play. Brigid Lowry took home the Young Adult Fiction Prize for Tomorrow All Will Be Beautiful. Judges comments and shortlist here at the PLA webpapge. Brigid lives in Nelson, New Zealand now, but happened to be in Melbourne for the announcement. She was here to present a booked out writing workshop for teachers.
And finally, a note on Shaun Tan. Shaun will be the special guest of the Angouleme International Comics Festival in France in January 2009. He will share the billing with the world’s graphic novelists and illustrators including Daniel Clowes, Posy Simmonds and Chris Ware. Earlier this year The Arrival,published as Là où vont nos pères, won the Angouleme Book of the Year. The Angouleme Festival is a huge event, as France is one of the world’s three major centres of comic and graphic novel production. And the current issue of Magpies has a superb interview with Shaun Tan by Linnet Hunter that shows us another layer of what makes him such an outstanding artist.
