Finegan Kruckemeyer wins first prize in our national short story competition, The Hope Prize

BSL is delighted to announce the winners of our national story competition, The Hope Prize, which encourages writers to explore resilience in the face of poverty.

The winners are:

First prize: Finegan Kruckemeyer, 'Like Dresses in a Tree'

Second prize: Tess Rowley, 'The Girl Who Wanted to Paint the Moon'

Third prize: Kim Kelly, 'Messerschmitt'

The new anthology, drawing from The Hope Prize awarded and commended stories, will be published by Simon & Schuster in time for Christmas, and available at Readings and other good book shops.

Other category winners are:

Highly commended authors

Alice Bishop, 'Saltwater'

Melanie (Rees) Crouch, 'Lilly of the Locust Fields'

Vicky Daddo, 'Run'

Award for an emerging writer under 18

Eleanor George, 'Biographies of the British Monarchy'

Veronica Hester, 'We Will Go On'

Jenny Pang, 'The Space Between Stillness and Sleep'

Women’s Writing Career Development Scholarships

Two scholarships were made available, thanks to a generous supporter, for women writers whose stories showed great promise.

The scholarships, to enable women writers to further develop their skills, have been awarded to Melanie (Rees) Crouch and Vicky Daddo.

We established The Hope Prize thanks to the generosity of the late Prudence Myer and support of her family, to encourage writing that transcends stereotypes of ‘the poor’ and reflects the resilience we know that people show in the face of poverty and testing times.

The total prize pool is $17,750. The eminent judges are actor Cate Blanchett, former governor-general Quentin Bryce and author Kate Grenville, who are passionate about defeating disadvantage and care deeply about encouraging good writing.

The rigorous judging process has been assisted by our publishing partner, Simon & Schuster, and leading book retailer Readings. The book published by Simon & Schuster for the 2016 Hope Prize, Hope: An Anthology, is still available at Readings.