Literature Prize Past Winners
2009 WINNER: CATHERINE HARRIS
2009 RUNNERS-UP: FELICITY CASTAGNA
2009 COMMENDED: ERICA WOOLGAR and HILARY McDOWELL
2008 WINNER: CAMERON RAYNES
2008 RUNNERS-UP: SIALL WATERBRIGHT and KITA IQBAL
2008 COMMENDED: JUDY BIERWIRTH, JOHN MILLETT and ERIN CATHERINE RITCHIE
2007 WINNER: CHRIS WOMERSLEY
2007 COMMENDED: ANNA BUCK and MATTHEW LOWE
2006 WINNER: GIRJA TROPP
2006 RUNNERS-UP: LISA NANKERVIS and PATRICIA CORNELIUS
2005 WINNER: ALISON RAVENSCROFT
2005 RUNNERS-UP: MELISSA GOODE, EDWINA SHAW and GIRJA TROPP
2004 WINNER: ANN-MAREE PRIEST
2004 RUNNERS UP: BRONWYN LEA and EDWINA SHAW
2003 WINNER: ANDREW BELK
2003 SHORTLISTED: CAMPBELL MATTINSON, ELLEN RODGER and KATRINA MORIARTY
The Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize 2009
Read the 2009 winners and see the judges' comments at http://www.textjournal.com.au/ulrick
The Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize 2008
Judges' comments on the 2008 Literature Prize Winner: 'Taxi' by Cameron Raynes
This story is unusual yet not experimental. It reads almost like a crime movie, and would make a good short movie. I have just previewed an Australian film, Cactus, which is a crime road movie and this story generates more tension than the 90-minute film.
Themes of preoccupation in this story are like many in the rest of the 290 entries: the usual themes of birth, rites of passage, courtship, spiritual and personal search through many pathways – especially through travel – personality disarray and crisis, death. But this story had something else too: an economy, a deft handling of the undercurrents.
- Frank Moorhouse and Sally Breen
The Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize 2007
Judges' comments on the Literature Prize Winner 2007: 'The Possibility of Water' by Chris WomersleyThere were 299 stories entered in the Award this year....but some stories linger.
The winner in 2007 is....the kind of story where you could argue that nothing much happens but everything does. It feels like you are in the narrator's head and his body. Because that's what strikes me most about this work - the sensory milieu which contrasts so strongly with the narrator's reduced capacity to feel. There is the gritty heat of a Melbourne summer. Scorched concrete. Wind and the lack of it. Sweat. Skin and bedraggled bodies compliant to the need for pleasure, the relief and the needle.
I had recently been in Melbourne when I read the story and to me it seemed to capture some of the hard poetry you feel in that stripped-back urban landscape. This wasn't a pretty world but it was raw and potent. Reading the story reminded me of the effect of a good Leonard Cohen song. A kind of sweet sadness. Inevitability. Letting go. A story about rushing and repose. - Sally Breen
The Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize 2006
Judges' comments on the Literature Prize Winner 2006: 'Advent' by Girja TroppShort story writing is thriving, certainly in the English language in this country. The evidence is the large number of entries (271) submitted to this award, and the high quality of their writing. Very many of them were what we would have to term 'publishable quality'. I do note however that the winner, the runner-up, the highly commended, the winner from last year and the year before all come from Victoria. This has to be a meaningless co-incidence.
You know, it's hard to pick a winner out of a good field. The story first has to make you want to read it again, that gets it on the short list. That final something that makes you go - it's got to be this one - is not measurable or predictable. The best short stories will give you a different experience every time, something new to appreciate and make you want to read them again in a different time, maybe in a different mood.
There were lots of good stories here. Many were realist, with an exquisite mastery of spare, precise language, brutal and delicate. The winning short story impressed us at night and in the morning. The story had something more of what I suppose we can call the unpredictable, the astonishing. We found the mind at work behing this story an intriguing one. It's a story that seems to gather into it many of the stories of our day, to tell us something about our world by telling us about a world that isn't exactly like ours, to give a sense of the experience of living through the artifice of crafted sentences.
The Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize 2005
Judges' comments on the Literature Prize Winner 2005: 'Object Lessons' by Alison Ravenscroft'Object Lessons' is the most complex of the stories and takes risks, leaving the safety net of narrative to rest beautifully on existential observation. - Frank Moorhouse
The writing has a hypnotic rhythm that is compelling. The individual sections, i.e. the meditations on objects, are ... a potent realization of what might be described as a female aesthetic... - Amanda Lohrey
I was amazed and impressed..memorable and powerful writing... - Michael Wilding
The Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize 2004
Rockhampton academic wins $10,000 prize for essay about the erotics of readingRockhampton academic Dr Ann-Maree Priest has won the Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize 2004. Awarded this year for a short work of non-fiction, the prize went to an essay titled "Towards an Erotics of Reading".
The judges said of the essay:
"Towards an Erotics of Reading" explores well and originally the reading experience and its complications, especially when it can be transformed by the reader's imagination into sensations of the physical. The essay identifies the act of empathy in reading and the nature of this emotion. - Frank Moorhouse
"Towards an Erotics of Reading" is a very finely-judged piece, notable for its clarity and fluency. Above all I was impressed by the great assurance with which it negotiates the boundaries of its genre-as-essay. Unlike many other entries it's clear on what those boundaries are and what its readership is. Hence the tenor of its "pitch" is finely tuned and the blend of the personal and the discursive is beautifully balanced and modulated. - Amanda Lohrey
"Towards an Erotics of Reading" is a sophisticated piece of non-fiction prose considering the visceral nature of the act of reading. The main ideas are original, insightful and persuasive, the style is graceful, the approach highly personal and the imagery vivid. - Donna Lee BrienAfter reading her essay at the Josephine Ulrick Awards Night Dinner on the Gold Coast (30 March 2004), Dr Priest said she had not expected celebrity or significant prize money as a reward for writing in the essay form.
"It was amazing to meet so many great novelists and poets and writers," she said.
Dr Priest is looking forward to the essay being published in the Griffith Review early next year.The Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize 2003
Melbourne author wins inaugural $10,000 literature prizeAn aspiring Melbourne author has won the inaugural Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize, administered by Griffith University's School of Arts on the Gold Coast.
Andrew Belk, from South Yarra, was announced the winner at a special function on the Gold Coast on April 1.
He won the $10,000 prizemoney for his short story The Big Jesus, described as "road trip meets doomed romance". It's about a couple (one of whom is dying) who decide to go on a search for a mythical Big Jesus, visiting a lot of other Big Things along the way.
Andrew said the award would give him the confidence to start writing his first novel.
"This award has given me the self-belief that writing is what I should be doing and that writing a novel isn't impossible".
The Prize attracted 340 entries. Shortlisted writers were: Campbell Mattinson, of Footscray, Victoria, and Ellen Rodger and Katrina Moriarty, both of Stanmore, NSW.
Judges were Australian authors Associate Professor Nigel Krauth (from Griffith University), Frank Moorhouse and Amanda Lohrey. Associate Professor Krauth said the School of Arts was excited to be administering the Prize as the School had one of Australia's largest Creative Writing programs as part of its mix of creative arts and media degrees.
"There is not another short writing prize of this magnitude in Australia and the winner will receive significant national recognition in the writing industry", he said.
The School administers the Prize on behalf of the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Foundation for the Arts on the Gold Coast.
It will be awarded for a different genre of short literature each year over a three-year cycle.