Announcing the 2024 Whitsundays Literary Heart Award winners
In 2024, the Whitsundays Writers Festival established the Whitsundays Literary Heart Awards, a program that aims to spotlight the diverse talents within the Australian creative community while also paying homage to the captivating Heart Reef—a natural wonder found in the Whitsundays region.
The Heart Awards offers $10,000 across four categories to recognise and honour outstanding contributions to the literary and design landscape.
Today, the Festival is excited to announce the winners for 2024.
The Gloria Burley Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript
This award honours the legacy of Gloria Burley who was the driving force in the establishment of the Whitsunday Writers Festival which ran 2010-17. She penned two books titled A Rolling Stone Gathers No Husbands, chronicled many of her travels, with Gloria visiting more than 100 different countries during her life, and Blood & Guts that sums up her exploits as a nurse in regional Australia. Gloria passed away from cancer in 2018.
Our award for Best Unpublished Manuscript offers $2,500 for first prize and $1,000 for the runner up for the best original and unpublished creative fiction works. The award sought submissions from around Australia of 12,000 words of completed manuscripts.
The Gloria Burley Award is being generously supported by Ivan Lizarralde of Blue Peace Enterprises in honour of Gloria’s memory.
Second Prize is awarded to Condemnation to Beasts by Noah Bennett.
In Condemnation to Beasts we find an international student, running from his past in England, discovers his crush is trapped in an abusive relationship with their tutor.
Noah Bennett was born in Melbourne where he grew up with a zest for reading, storytelling and adventure. Not much has changed, as he currently travels around Australia in a camper van, completing locum Physiotherapy work and seeking inspiration for future stories! This is Noah’s second completed manuscript. His first manuscript, Dog Days, was long listed for the Richelle Prize in 2022. Noah has recently started drafting his third upcoming novel, and is looking to build a writing platform on social media in the coming months.
The winner is The Christmas Cult by Catherine Owen.
The synopsis for The Christmas Cult reads: When Lacey and her dad, Gaz, discover that their new home is in the popular ‘Christmas light street’ Gaz tries to resist the pressure to join the Christmas Cult but ends up surprising their new neighbours with his unique decorating style.
Catherine is from Nelson Bay NSW and has been writing since 2020 and has completed two middle grade novels, Resistance and the Christmas Cult. She is currently at the National Writers’ House at Varuna working on a third middle grade novel and her first Young Adult novel. She was fortunate enough to receive one of Varuna’s 2024 residential fellowships (33 awarded out of a pool of 555 applicants).
Best Short Story Award
The Heart Award for Best Short Story has two divisions: adult and under 18. In both divisions, first prize will receive $1,000 and $500 for the runner up. The awards sought submissions from around Australia of up to 3,000 words of unpublished creative fiction stories.
ADULT DIVISION
Second Prize is awarded to In the Gardens by Gregory Vickas.
The synopsis for In the Gardens reads: Our First Nations people are justifiably focused on rebuilding traumatised culture, but they are not alone in their search to rebuild lost culture.
Gregory Vickas describes himself as an ‘indigenous ethnic’ – an Australian-born son of Greek migrants. In 2005 he set aside his long career as an architect, community worker and educator to focus instead on what he was always meant to be: an impassioned storyteller and writer. Since then, Gregory has written an opera libretto, a fictional trilogy, and an off-beat but deeply human memoir called Did You Want Guilt with That? Tales from a Grenglish Life and Other Recipes for Meaningful Existence.
The winner is Resurrection by Sue Osborn.
In Resurrection a child disappears and thirty years later a man visiting Coffey’s Inlet is unsettled as suppressed memories surface.
Sue is based in Taringa Queensland and wrote stories as a child and bad poetry as a university student. After completing her degree, she commenced teaching and life got in the way of writing. Two years ago, she gave up her day job as Head of Secondary School to indulge her passion for writing and has found success in a range of national competitions with a number of her short stories and poems being shortlisted or receiving prizes. Her most recent success was last year when she won the Open Section of Jugiong Writers Festival Literary Competition.
UNDER 18 DIVISION
The Under 18 Best Short Story Award is proudly supported by James Cook University’s Roderick Centre for Australian Literature and Creative Writing. The Centre fosters the reading and writing of Australian literature and encourages the study of Australian literature and literary cultures.
Four young Whitsunday writers were shortlisted for the award with a $1000 for first prize and $500 for the runner up.
Second Prize is awarded to My Mother’s Betrayal by Mila Kronk.
My Mother’s Betrayal is a story about when a girl, bored of her reality, unknowingly is shown a snippet of the future, she tries to ignore the strange occurrences she notices afterwards.
In her submission, Mila shared that she wanted to challenge herself and try to create her own plot. She found it was difficult – Mila didn’t know how it was going to end, and because of this she rewrote the same story so many times, each time getting closer to the result.
The winner is Unspoken Words by Alessa Penglase-Fortunato.
Her submission, Unspoken Words, we are introduced to Avery who, grieving the loss of her sister, finds comfort and forgiveness in her sister’s ghost.
Alessa Penglase-Fortunato, for ever since she can remember, has loved the thrill of picking up a pen and paper and being able to transport herself and others into an entirely different world. At the early age of seven, Alessa published her first ever short story in an anthology after participating in a workshop. From then on, she has shown a deep passion about writing and hopes to inspire others through storytelling and art and continue my journey in writing.
Poetry Prize
Offering first prize of $1,000 and $500 for the runner up, the award sought submissions from around Australia of up to 50-lines of unpublished poems.
The winning poems have been selected based on its originality, creativity and expressiveness.
We are very grateful for the support of an anonymous benefactor who is sponsoring this prize without seeking praise.
Second Prize is awarded to Pirates of Andaman by Paris Rosemont.
Pirates of the Andaman opens with:
My father was a man of few words. Except
when he released a story from his slow-
drip vault. His offerings would drop like shiny
coloured balls spun inside the giant metal cage
on the Monday, Wednesday or Saturday Lotto drawn
and televised live at 8.45pm on Channel 7TWO.
We’d listen with tarsier eyes as a tale from his past
would roll smoothly along the curved pipework and plop
into our laps like missing parts of a 10,000 piece jigsaw
puzzle. We were only 8,271 pieces short.
Award winning poet Paris Rosemont is the author of the 2023 poetry collection Banana Girl which was shortlisted for the Association for the Study of Australian Literature’s 2024 Mary Gilmore Award for a first volume of poetry. Paris delights in bringing poetry to life through multi-disciplinary modes of expression.
The winner is Verandah by David Atkinson.
In midsummer, broiled weatherboard,
it is impossible to sleep.
Our parents escape with us
to the gauze-lined expanse
of the veranda, to an inkling of air.
Waning daylight lustre blurs,
seconds slide into musk,
twilight dips into shadow.
In the open we are kneaded into nature.
The night breathes a soft-hued concerto,
the wildlife variations.
A trotting fox yawls its solitary call.
Beetles and moths are gathered
by candle light, restlessness reaches
up splintered posts. Childish rumination
on where somnolent snakes go at night.
The rabbits of the ridge emerge
from their hairpin burrows,
graze on untrodden shoots,
an eye alert for spectral shadows.
Beyond the stands of ringbarked trees
the muted moon rises
and the stars are glow worms
over the riverine flats.
David Atkinson is a Sydney poet. His awards include First prizes in the Ros Spencer Poetry Prize and in the Jean Stone Poetry Award together with Second and Third prizes in the Tom Collins National Poetry Prize. David’s poems have been published widely in Australia, the USA, the UK. David convenes poetry workshops in Sydney.
Best Published Book Cover Design Awards
This award offers first prize of $1,500 and $500 for the runner up for original design works for books published in Australia between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024 and offered for sale to the public. Book covers in any genre were eligible, as were printed books, ebooks and audio book cover designs.
From our research, other than the designer’s association award, this appears we are the only Australian writer’s festival to offer an award for book cover design.
Second Prize will be shared by A Leaf Called Greaf, illustrator Kelly Canby and Mums and Mogs, author and illustrator Mick Elliot.
Kelly Canby is an internationally published illustrator and author whose love of storytelling started at a young age and has led to several award-winning books. In a Leaf Called Greaf, Bear is all alone and lonely until he finds the greenest, most beguiling leaf. Bear holds Greaf tight throughout the days and nights that follow. Bear can barely remember a time before Greaf. It is as if things have always been this way. Until one day, they aren’t.
Mick Elliott is an illustrator, author, TV producer and screenwriter. His books include the illustrated junior fiction series, Squidge Dibley and the hilarious middle-grade trilogy, The Turners. Mick’s picture books, Mums & Mogs and Dads & Dogs are warm-hearted celebrations of parenthood, pets, and cultural diversity.
The winner is Those Girls, designer Walker Books.
Pamela Rushby is the author of over 200 books for children and young adults, as well as children’s TV scripts, documentaries, short stories and freelance journalism. She has won several awards, including the NSW Premier’s Ethel Turner Prize and five CBCA Notable Books.
Those Girls explore the roles, and struggles, of women in wartime. Inspired by a recruitment poster, 16 year old Hilly volunteers for the Women’s Land Army in 1942. She expects to be picking sun-kissed fruit and bottle-feeding fluffy white lambs, all while she’s wearing a flattering outfit. Travelling to farms across Queensland, Hilly encounters backbreaking work, but also friendship and fellowship with other Land Army girls. War is a chance for a life away from family and familiarity, offering adventure and romance. But the poster didn’t mention crutching sheep or 4am starts, or the prejudice they would face, and that some men needed to be fought off, rather than fought for. In the midst of adversity, Hilly finds exactly what she is capable of … and it might be more than she ever thought possible. She is one of ‘those girls with grit’.
The Festival offers its heartfelt congratulations to the winners and encourage those who submitted entries to the Heart Awards to continue pursue their storytelling and contribution to Australia’s literary community with passion and dedication.