Having your pudding and eating it too. Louis Laumen’s Magic Pudding sculpture, courtesy of the The Melbourne Prize
The splashy-cashy Melbourne Prize for Literature, and a number of other writing awards worth a total $100,000, are open to screenwriters and playwrights – not just the usual novelists, essayists and poets. Entries close 9 July so there’s still time to fantasize about the windfall.
The big one is the Melbourne Prize for Literature 2018, worth $60,000 for ‘a Victorian author whose body of published work has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural life.’ This award is supported by the Vera Moore Foundation, the Tallis Foundation and the Melbourne Prize Trust.
The Trust and the Prize (which is awarded in a three-year cycle to either Urban Sculpture, Literature or Music) was announced in 2004 by Simon Warrender, following the unveiling of his commissioning of The Magic Pudding sculpture by Louis Laumen in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens’ new Ian Potter Foundation Children’s Garden precinct.
Rather cutely, the prize is partially financed through proceeds from the sale of miniatures of the jaunty bronze sculpture of characters drawn from Norman Lindsay’s classic Australian fantasy about a self-renewing pudding that desperately wants to be eaten. We need more of those in the Arts, and for most writers, even an ordinary pudding would be nice.
Other prizes on offer include The Best Writing Award, worth $30,000, is for a single published work of outstanding clarity, originality and creativity, and The Readings Residency Award for an early career published Victorian author, across all writing genres, worth a total of $7,500. This includes $5,000 cash from Readings, a Qantas international travel component of $2,500 and some time spent writing and living at the historic Norma Redpath Studio in Carlton.
All prizes are open to Victorian writers working in all genres whose work has been published or produced. The author’s work can include all genres, for example, fiction, non-fiction, essays, plays, screenplays and poetry.
Former winners of the Melbourne Prize include poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe, novelists Gerald Murnane and Alex Miller and writer Helen Garner. Garner won the first prize in 2006 for her body of work, which includes screenplays for Jane Campion’s 2 Friends (1986) and Gillian Armstrong’s The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992) though her award-winning and bestselling work as a non fiction writer probably loomed far larger in the judge’s minds.
The Judges this year are: Marieke Hardy, Artistic Director & CEO of the Melbourne Writers Festival; Michael Williams, Director of the Melbourne Writers Festival; Khalid Warsame, writer and creative producer; as well as authors and former Best Writing Award winners Nam Le and Andrea Goldsmith.
Entries close 9 July, 5pm with . Visit www.melbourneprize.org for details and entries. Be aware though, there are entry costs: $45 entry fee for the Melbourne Prize and Best Writing Award, and a $25 fee for the Readings Residency.
(Perhaps you just want one of those limited edition bronze Magic Pudding sculpture miniatures. It will set you back a mere $4295.00.)
