the 2021 rachel funari prize for fiction: the shortlist
The Lip team is pleased to announce the shortlist of the 2021 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction.
Homing Stars – Tiffany Korssen
Lady Finger – Keshe Chow
The Tooth Seed – Hannah van Didden
Nostos – Marina Deller
Here I Am – Tanya Vavilova
Lohmelle – Charlotte Guest
Mansion – Kerrin O’Sullivan
Margarita – Emily Kiddell
Millipede House – Alaina Dean
The Traveller – Nadia L King
The Ground is Greyer – Poppy Solomon
A huge thank you to everyone who sent us their stories this year. We extend our congratulations to all shortlisted entrants, and look forward to announcing the winners on Tuesday 22nd June as part of the Emerging Writers’ Festival’s ‘Amazing Babes’ event.
For more information about the event, please click here.
The 2021 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction is judged by Lip’s editors as well as our panel of esteemed judges.
Adalya Nash Hussein is a writer and editor. Her work has appeared in Voiceworks, The Lifted Brow, Ibis House, Meanjin and Going Down Swinging. She has been an Emerging Writers’ Festival Melbourne Recital Centre Writer in Residence, a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow, and shortlisted for the Scribe Nonfiction Prize. She is the editor of Voiceworks and a co-editor at Liminal.
Vivian Pham is a fiction writer, poet and aspiring folklorist. She is the Australian delegate of the International Congress of Youth Voices and her debut novel The Coconut Children was published by Penguin Random House in March 2020. Vivian is currently studying philosophy and creative writing at university.
Nicola Redhouse is the author of Unlike the Heart: a memoir of brain and mind (UQP). Her writing appears in The Monthly, the Age, Best Australian Stories and Meanjin among other places. She is currently writing a nonfiction book on isolation funded by the Australia Council and Creative Victoria. She has worked as a book editor for Australian publishers big and small for nearly two decades, and teaches creative writing sessionally at RMIT and the University of Melbourne, while currently undertaking a PhD by Practice Research Symposium (Creative Writing) at RMIT.
The judges of the 2021 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction: (L-R) Adalya Nash Hussein, Vivian Pham and Nicola Redhouse.
This year’s prize is proudly supported by Affirm Press, Pan Macmillan Australia, Fremantle Press, Scribe Publications, Aniko Press, Debut Books, Express Media, NewSouth Publishing, Queensland Writers Centre, and the Emerging Writers’ Festival.
The sponsors and supporters of the 2021 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction
Background Information
This year marks the Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction’s ninth year. Writers were invited to submit previously unpublished and unperformed fiction up to 2000 words that engaged with the theme ‘homecoming’. The competition was open to all women and non-binary writers.
This prize is held in honour of Lip’s late founding editor, Rachel Funari, in recognition of her contribution to the arts.
