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Peter Blazey Fellowship
Subcategory of Australian Centre Literary Awards
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History

The Peter Blazey Fellowship was established in 1974 to honour the memory of Peter Blazey, a journalist, author and gay rights activist. The fellowship is awarded annually to writers in the non-fiction fields of biography, autobiography and life writing and is intended to further a work in progress.

Source: http://australian-centre.unimelb.edu.au/prizes/blazey Sighted: 15/11/2013.

Notes

  • Inagurated in 2004, the Peter Blazey Fellowship 'is awarded annually to writers in the non-fiction fields of biography, autobiography and life writing and is intended to further a work in progress.' The award provides a writer-in-residency at the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne and is awarded 'on the basis of literary merit'.

    (Source: The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne website, http://uninews.unimelb.edu.au/articleid_1173.html

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2021

Year: 2020

Year: 2019

winner y separately published work icon Love Marriage in Kabul : A Memoir Sanaz Fotouhi , Elizabeth Bay : Gazebo Books , 2020 21065885 2020 single work autobiography

'In 2006, Sanaz Fotouhi, a young woman in her twenties, travels to Afghanistan with her partner to make a film.

'Seven years and four trips later their feature documentary Love Marriage in Kabul wins awards and the hearts of audiences in Australia and around the world.

'Love Marriage in Kabul: A Memoir is the behind-the-scenes account of the hardships and heartaches, tears and joys of the seemingly impossible project of making a film in Afghanistan. It is the story of a young woman’s determination to confront her fears to provide an insight into the hidden world of Afghanistan’s widows and orphans.

'With rare compassion and lucidity, Sanaz Fotouhi chronicles her inner struggles and external events and leads us to interrogate our own notion of humanity.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

as 'Journey of Hope'.

Year: 2018

winner y separately published work icon Truganini : Journey through the Apocalypse Cassandra Pybus , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2020 18268689 2020 single work biography

'Cassandra Pybus' ancestors told a story of an old Aboriginal woman who would wander across their farm on Bruny Island, just off the coast of south-east Tasmania, throughout the 1850s and 1860s. As a child, Cassandra didn't know this woman was Truganini, and that she was walking over the country of her clan, the Nuenonne, of whom she was the last.

'The name of Truganini is vaguely familiar to most Australians as 'the last of her race'. She has become an international icon for a monumental tragedy: the extinction of the original people of Tasmania within her lifetime. For nearly seven decades, she lived through a psychological and cultural shift more extreme than most human imaginations could conjure. She is a hugely significant figure in Australian history and we should know about how she lived, not simply that she died. Her life was much more than a regrettable tragedy.

'Cassandra has examined the original eyewitness records to write an extraordinary account of this lively, intelligent, sensual young woman’s life. Both inspiring and heart-wrenching, Truganini's story is now told in full for the first time.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2017

winner y separately published work icon Into the Loneliness : The Unholy Alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates Eleanor Hogan , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2021 20875154 2021 single work biography

'Daisy Bates and Ernestine Hill were bestselling writers who told of life in the vast Australian interior. Daisy Bates, dressed in Victorian garb, malnourished and half-blind, camped with Aboriginal people in Western Australia and on the Nullarbor for decades, surrounded by her books, notes and artefacts. A self-taught ethnologist, desperate to be accepted by established male anthropologists, she sought to document the language and customs of the people who visited her camps. In 1935, Ernestine Hill, journalist and author of The Great Australian Loneliness, coaxed Bates to Adelaide to collaborate on a newspaper series. Their collaboration resulted in the 1938 international bestseller, The Passing of the Aborigines. This book informed popular opinion about Aboriginal people for decades, though Bates's failure to acknowledge Hill as her co-author strained their friendship.

'Traversing great distances in a campervan, Eleanor Hogan reflects on the lives and work of these indefatigable women. From a contemporary perspective, their work seems quaint and sentimental, their outlook and preoccupations dated, paternalistic and even racist. Yet Bates and Hill took a genuine interest in Aboriginal people and their cultures long before they were considered worthy of the Australian mainstream's attention. With sensitivity and insight, Hogan wonders what their legacies as fearless female outliers might be.' (Publication summary)

Works About this Award

Undercover Susan Wyndham , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 16-17 September 2006; (p. 31)
A column canvassing current literary news including a brief report on independent publisher, Finlay Lloyd, and the announcement of Judith Pugh as the winner of the 2007 Peter Blazey Fellowship.
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