Dorothy Hewett Award 2017 for an unpublished manuscript

Do you have a completed, unpublished manuscript living in your bottom drawer (literally or figuratively)? Does it have a connection to Western Australia?

The Dorothy Hewett Award is for unpublished manuscripts and the winner gets a cash prize of $10,000. Plus, the winner will be offered a publishing contract. Woohoo!

It’s open to writers with a completed, unpublished manuscript. The work needs to have a connection to Western Australia and be fiction, memoir, a verse novel, poetry or narrative non-fiction.

Sounds awesome, right? Entries are closing soon (1 August 2017), so it’s time to dust off that manuscript and get it in.

Why does it need to have a connection to Western Australia? Well, that’s all to do with the award’s namesake – Dorothy Hewett.

From the University of Western Australia Publishing website:

“Dorothy Hewett (1923-2002) is considered one of Australia’s leading writers whose work captures and disrupts ideas of normalcy in twentieth century Australian culture. As a staunch feminist and, for a long time, a communist, Hewett gave voice to the marginalised. In 1986, Hewett was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her services to literature. Hewett won the Western Australian Premier’s Poetry Award in 1994 and 1995 for her collections Peninsula and Collected Poems: 1940-1995.”

This year’s judges are the Director of UWA Publishing Terri-Ann White, poet Lucy Dougan, and author James Ley.

Entries close on the 1 August 2017 and the short list will be announced 15 November 2017.

To find out more information on how to enter, plus the terms and conditions, head over to the University of Western Australia Publishing website.