Sharron Booth, Joanna Morrison and Maria Papas are in the running for $15,000 in prize money from the City of Fremantle and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press. All three Western Australian writers are shortlisted for the 2020 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award, which is now in its thirtieth year.
Small Steps: A Physio in Ethiopia by Julie Sprigg will be launched by fellow Fremantle Press non-fiction writer Anne-Louise Willoughby at 6.30 pm on Thursday 10 September at the Balmoral Hotel. Supported by Crow Books, Julie, who is based in Victoria Park, will use the event as an opportunity to raise money for the not-for-profit organisation 100 Women. The $5 cover charge will be donated to the organisation, which has a mission to help everyday people create a world where women and girls can live safely and have access to health, education and economic freedom.
Aussie director Nicholas Verso and producer Tania Chambers optioned the film and television rights to Holden Sheppard’s YA novel Invisible Boys this week. Invisible Boyshas already won the 2018 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award, the 2019 Kathleen Mitchell Award and the 2019 Western Australian Premier’s Award for an Emerging Writer, and was shortlisted for a 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Readings Prize.
Young adult novelist Holden Sheppard was one of four Fremantle Press authors to be acknowledged in the 2019 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards ceremony at the State Library of Western Australia on Friday 7 August 2020. Holden took home the The Premier's Prize for an Emerging Writer worth $15,000 for his debut novel, Invisible Boys.
Father of the Lost Boys author and former child soldier Yuot A. Alaak says lived experiences have a lot to teach us. He says giving students the opportunity to enter the lives of refugee children in a war, but from a safe distance, can help build empathy and understanding. In this very special blog post, Yuot and is joined by his father, Mecak A. Alaak, an inspirational teacher working in the most difficult circumstances imaginable.
Recorded at Perth Festival’s Literature and Ideas Weekend, this podcast is a live recording of the seminar ‘A Day in the Life of Bestselling Authors and Booksellers’, hosted by Holden Sheppard, with guests Natasha Lester, Michael Earp, Allyce Cameron and Aisling Lawless.
For Yuot A. Alaak, stories were a way of distracting himself from the fear of enemy attack, starvation and hardship, and to keep hope alive. In this episode, Yuot discusses his City of Fremantle Hungerford Award shortlisted memoir, Father of the Lost Boys, which tells the story of his family, especially his father, Mecak Ajang Alaak who, on a four-year journey, led 20,000 lost boys to safety during the Second Sudanese Civil War.