Anna Thomson, an emerging author from Armidale, has won the inaugural Varuna/New England Writers' Centre Fellowship.
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Anna is very excited and looking forward immensely to taking up the Fellowship next year at Varuna, the National Writers' House, in the Blue Mountains.
There, she will work on her novel Bloodwood, a paranormal fantasy judges praised for its strong sense of pace and rhythm in a richly imagined world.
The Fellowship is supported by a generous grant from the Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund. It includes full board and accommodation at Varuna, funds towards travel, and a one-on-one consultation with a Varuna expert.
Varuna judges chose Anna's winning submission from a shortlist of three selected by New England Writers' Centre judges.
Varuna's Creative Director Amy Sambrooke said it was not easy deciding between the three excellent candidates.
"We were delighted to see such strong applications, though it did make it very hard to choose! Anna Thomson's manuscript is a great read, and we are really looking forward to welcoming her to Varuna in 2020. We are really excited to see how her work progresses."
The other two shortlisted finalists, Fiona Murphy and Greg Woodland, will each receive a year's free membership of the New England Writers' Centre, as well as two free workshops of their choice from NEWC's 2020 program.
Varuna and the New England Writers' Centre warmly congratulate Anna Thomson for winning the inaugural Varuna/New England Writers' Centre Fellowship, and wish her a wonderful week at Varuna in 2020.
They congratulate the shortlisted finalists on their excellent achievement, and wish them all the best for their writing. They also thank the Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund for the generous grant that made this inaugural Fellowship possible.
The New England Writers' Centre will hold a celebration of local literary talent at Reader's Companion on Wednesday, December 11, at 5.30 pm.
Guests include Anna; Kristin Devine, the winner of the centre's national award for illustrators, the New England Illustration Prize; and William Bennett, winner of the Fiction category in the Thunderbolt Prize, a national award which received entries from all over Australia.
Other local writers and illustrators will also share their achievements.
