Established in 1996, the Kathleen Mitchell Award is an Australian literature prize for young authors. It is awarded only every second year.
The prize was established under the will of Kathleen Mitchell with the following aim: 'the advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature, to improve the educational style of the authors, and to provide them with additional amounts and thus enable them to improve their literary efforts'.
The prize is managed by The Trust Company, and is awarded to the novel of the highest literary merit published by an author under 30.
The Kathleen Mitchell Award was not awarded in 2016.
Source: http://thetrustcompany.com.au/awards/kathleen-mitchell-award/ Sighted: 26/11/2013.
'The Kathleen Mitchell Award is an Award dedicated to encourage young Australian authors to achieve their dreams.
'Established by the will of the late Kathleen Adele Mitchell who directed the Award to encourage "the advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature, to improve the educational style of the authors and to provide them with additional amounts and thus enable them to improve their literary efforts". First established in 1996, the Award is a biennial award with prize money being $7,500.'
(No award was made in 2002.)
Source: Trust website: http://www.trust.com.au/Content.aspx?topicID=74
Sighted: 17/05/2006
'In a small town, everyone thinks they know you: Charlie is a hardcore rocker, who's not as tough as he looks. Hammer is a footy jock with big AFL dreams, and an even bigger ego. Zeke is a shy over-achiever, never macho enough for his family. But all three boys hide who they really are. When the truth is revealed, will it set them free or blow them apart?'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'2006, Berlin. The once-divided city still holds its share of secrets.
'One afternoon, near the tourist trap of Checkpoint Charlie, Clare meets Andi. He's a native Berliner and English teacher; she's an architectural photographer who has taken leave from her job in Australia to travel through Eastern Europe. There is an instant attraction, and when Andi invites her to stay, Clare thinks she may finally have found somewhere to call home.
'But as the days pass and the walls of Andi's apartment close in, Clare begins to wonder if it's really love that Andi is after ... or something more sinister.' (From the publisher's website.)
'In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam - and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In "Meeting Elise" an ageing New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees where a young woman's bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.' (From the author's website.)