News

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.

2025 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship

Applications for the 14th Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship are now closed. The Fellowship shortlist will be announced in January 2025 and the winner will be announced at Adelaide Writers Week on Wednesday 5 March 2025. Our judges for the 2025 Fellowship are Clare Wright, Christos Tsiolkas, Della Rowley and Lynn Buchanan.

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.

 

 

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