2025 Fellowship shortlist announced
Nine Australian writers have been shortlisted for the 2025 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship:
- Jennifer Martin (VIC), writing about Australian journalist Eva Sommer, inaugural winner of the Walkley Award.
- Jo Oliver (NSW), for a biography of Australian artist Iso Rae.
- Julienne van Loon (VIC), for a series of biographical essays about contemporary women scientists, ‘Women of the Future’.
- Lucas Jordan (VIC), writing ‘Touching the dream-time’, a biography of two Arrernte and Irish-Australian families in the Northern Territory.
- Melanie Saward (QLD), writing ‘With the Feathers’, a memoir and family history exploring connection to Country and culture, family, motherhood and grief.
- Michelle Scott Tucker (VIC), for a biography of Louisa Lawson, newspaper proprietor, poet, suffragist and mother of Henry Lawson.
- Michelle Staff (ACT), for a joint biography of feminist activists and sisters Bessie Rischbieth and Olive Evans.
- Monique Rooney (ACT), for a biography of Australian writer Ruth Park.
- Yen Tran (WA), writing a memoir of her Vietnamese family who came to Australia as refugees.
We had a large number of applications this year from writers across Australia. The shortlist reflects a diverse range of subjects and literary approaches to biographical writing in Australia today. There’s detailed scholarly research as well as imagination and passion evident in the proposals. It is wonderful that the Fellowship we established in Hazel’s name continues to encourage and support Australian writers and biographers.
Our judges for the 2025 Fellowship are Clare Wright, Christos Tsiolkas, Della Rowley and Lynn Buchanan. The winner of the 2025 Fellowship will be announced on Wednesday 5 March 2025 at Adelaide Writers’ Week. This will follow the Hazel Rowley Memorial lecture to be given by our 2016 Fellow, Matthew Lamb, in conversation with Clare Wright about his biography Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths (Knopf, 2023). The theme is ‘Legend versus Facts: a biographical dilemma’.
New book from one of our shortlisted writers
Congratulations to Belinda Probert, who we shortlisted for the 2023 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship for a biography of her father, Bill Probert. Her book Bill’s Secrets: Class, War and Ambition has just been published by Upswell.
Major Bill Probert was a decorated war hero and a gifted linguist in the Intelligence Corps. He was apparently a cultured Englishman, with no living family of his own. After his death, however, Bill’s wife and children discovered that he began life as Roy, in an impoverished Welsh mining family in the Rhondda, and that members of his family were still alive. This book is the compelling story of a daughter’s hunt for her perplexing and unpredictable father.
For more information and to order a copy, go to the Upswell website.
Frank Moorhouse book longlisted
Matthew Lamb’s book Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths has been longlisted for the 2025 Tasmanian Premier’s Prize for Non-fiction. The shortlist will be announced in February 2025 and winners will be announced in March 2025.
Matthew will be in conversation about his Frank Moorhouse biography with our Fellowship judge Clare Wright at Adelaide Writers Week on 5 March 2025 for our Hazel Rowley memorial lecture and Fellowship announcement.
Ann-Marie Priest wins the 2024 Magarey Medal for Biography
Congratulations to our 2017 Fellow, Ann-Marie Priest, who has won another award for her biography of Australian poet Gwen Harwood, My Tongue is My Own: A Life of Gwen Harwood (La Trobe University Press/Black Inc, 2022). As well as the 2023 National Biography Award, Ann-Marie has now won the 2024 Magarey Medal for Biography. Others on the shortlist were Meg Foster (Boundary Crossers: The Hidden History of Australia’s Other Bushrangers), Kate Fullagar (Bennelong & Phillip: A History Unravelled), Jillian Graham (Inner Song: A Biography of Margaret Sutherland) and Brigitta Olubas (Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life).
The Magarey Medal is jointly administered by the Australian Historical Association (AHA) and the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL). It is awarded biennally for the best biography written by a female author about an Australian subject and published in the previous two years. It balances the football Magarey medal with one for female scholarly writing. This medal was established in 2005 by Emerita Professor Susan Magarey from the University of Adelaide.
You can listen to Ann-Marie talking about her biography in an interview in June 2024 with Gabriella Kelly-Davies for her podcast series Biographers in Conversation.
2024 Hazel Rowley Fellowship winner
The winner of the 2024 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship, worth $20,000, is Kate Fullagar, who is writing a biography of Marguerite Wolters, a Dutch woman who was a spy mistress to empires and revolutionists in the 18th century. Marguerite Wolter’s intelligence to the British contributed significantly to their decision in 1786 to build a penal colony in NSW.
The announcement on 13 March at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne followed a discussion between Adolfo Aranjuez and Mandy Sayer, our 2021 Fellow, about her biography Those Dashing McDonagh Sisters: Australia’s first female filmmaking team.
More information about our 2024 winner can be found on our Fellowship page.
Frank Moorhouse biography published
We are incredibly pleased to announce that Volume one of a two-volume biography of Frank Moorhouse by Matthew Lamb, our 2016 Fellow, has just been released. Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths is published by Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Matthew has recently published an article in a Friday Essay for the Conversation where he discusses in detail how a biographer balances storytelling with a search for the truth. He talks compellingly about the complications and dilemmas a biographer faces – for example, what to do when the ‘legend’ conflicts with the facts, and how to avoid letting a friendship with your subject cloud your understanding of him as a biographical subject. Matthew also has a Substack newsletter where he has launched an occasional series on the ongoing project of writing Frank Moorhouse’s life, including reflections on the art of biography, literary culture and democracy (Public Things).
You can read reviews of Matthew’s book on The Guardian website, the Books+Publishing website and Inside Story website.
We congratulate Matthew on this magnificent book and urge you to buy a copy.
Ann-Marie Priest wins the 2023 National Biography Award
We are immensely pleased to announce that Ann-Marie Priest, our 2017 Fellow, has won the National Biography Award for her biography of Australian poet Gwen Harwood, My Tongue is My Own: A Life of Gwen Harwood (La Trobe University Press/Black Inc, 2022). This is the first biography of Gwen Harwood, one of Australia’s finest poets. The judges were unanimous in their praise of Ann-Marie’s research, scholarship and analysis, describing it as a ‘perceptive’ and ‘creative’ biography. Huge congratulations to Ann-Marie for a well-deserved win. We’re so proud to have played a part in supporting her work.
National Library Canberra acquires Hazel Rowley Papers
We have some exciting news for researchers and biographers.
Hazel Rowley lodged her Papers in relation to her Christina Stead biography with the National Library of Australia (NLA) back in 1996. The NLA has now acquired the rest of Hazel’s Papers in relation to her biographies of Richard Wright (2001), Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (2006), and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (2010). They have also acquired her Papers in relation to her essays and her other writing.
The NLA was very pleased to acquire the collection. It includes an original letter of Simone de Beauvoir and original letters of Christina Stead. The Papers are catalogued under the heading Papers of Hazel Rowley. For more information about Hazel Rowley and her writing, go to our Hazel Rowley page.
