2025 Hazel Rowley Fellowship winner
Della Rowley, Michelle Staff
The winner of the 2025 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship, worth $20,000, is Michelle Staff, who is writing a joint biography of influential feminist activists and sisters Bessie Rischbieth and Olive Evans (née Earle). Born in late 19th century South Australia, both sisters married and moved to Western Australia around the turn of the century. Although they led different lives, with Bessie becoming a childless but wealthy widow who travelled the world to promote women’s rights and Olive a mother of six who stayed in Perth working for similar causes, they shared similar interests and values. Bessie established an Australia-wide feminist organisation, the Australian Federation of Women Voters, and Olive was especially active in the Women’s Service Guilds of Western Australia. With a strong personal relationship that extended into their activist work, both played significant if differently recognised roles in Australian feminist history.
This year the judges also gave Highly Commended awards to Monique Rooney and Jennifer Martin. Monique is writing a biography of New Zealand-born Australian writer Ruth Park and Jennifer is writing a biography of Australian journalist Eva Sommer, inaugural winner of the Walkley Award.
The announcement on 5 March at Adelaide Writers’ Week followed a discussion between Geordie Williamson and Matthew Lamb, our 2016 Fellow, about his biography Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths (Knopf, 2023).
More information about our 2025 recipients can be found on our Fellowship page.
Frank Moorhouse book shortlisted
Congratulations to our 2016 Fellow, Matthew Lamb, whose book Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths (Knopf, 2023) has been shortlisted for the 2025 Tasmanian Premier’s Prize for Non-fiction. The winner will be announced in March 2025.
Matthew will be in conversation about his Frank Moorhouse biography with Geordie Williamson at Adelaide Writers’ Week on 5 March 2025 for our Hazel Rowley memorial lecture and Fellowship announcement. The theme is ‘Legend versus Facts: a biographical dilemma’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
