We are thrilled to announce the shortlist of the 2018 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. Thank you to each and every one of you who entered. We extend our congratulations to all shortlisted entrants. A Landing – Phoebe Chen Fishing for Yabbies – Laura McCluskey Highway – Alice Bishop Hollow – Ruth Gilbert In Search…
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To the woman at the end of our Main Rd near home. Waiting for the bus with a child in a pram, and a stubbie of full strength cracked well before midday – I’m sorry I judged you. I don’t know what your day (or life) has held. It’s obviously your choice what you…
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CW: Abuse, child abuse Freedom. As a kid, it meant zooming down our street, which ran from one edge of our flat dusty country town to the other, on my beloved yellow bike. Letting go of the handlebars, tipping my head back and taking in the cotton-candy coloured sky right on dusk. I was forever racing…
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I have spent the better part of my twenties working 80-hour weeks on an endless cycle of corporate deals. It is at 3am during one of these weeks of sleep deprivation that I realise I need a new hobby. Something to relax. Something that doesn’t involve waking up at 5am, riding a bike and sweating…
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The phrase ‘backwards and in heels’ is derived from a cartoon by Bob Thaves drawn in 1982. Specifically, the cartoon stated that Ginger Rogers performed everything that Fred Astaire did in their films, except backwards and in heels. This phrase has come to emulate the recurrent struggles of women working in a patriarchal world, as…
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Today we introduce you to author Briohny Doyle, one of the judges of the 2018 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. * What comes to mind when you think of our 2018 theme, ‘metamorphosis’? Kafka of course! And given that this is a prize for women’s writing, I’m thinking about Grete, who really needed her brother…
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You weren’t allowed to be gay at my high school, but of course that never stopped anyone – my best friend included. We’d known each other for five years, been out of school for one, when she came out to me. It wasn’t anything major on my end, she was my friend and her sexuality…
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Feminism is defined as “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities”. The broad spectrum of feminist ideologies (from radical, Marxist to liberal) have different expressions of this core belief, but they are all fighting to create an egalitarian society. Many branches of feminism also place emphasis on intersectionality, which considers…
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Over the next few weeks, we’ll be introducing you to our stellar line-up of judges for the 2018 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. Today, meet poet, Shastra Deo. * The Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction calls for a focus on women’s stories. What’s your view on the current state of women’s stories* in media and…
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“I think all women carry something of a rebellion inside them that often goes unexpressed. Because we think we are not in the race – or game, or whatever the sporting analogy is – we have a sense of anarchy that I think is an advantage. In times like these it threatens to erupt. It…
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Over the next few weeks, we’ll be introducing you to our stellar line-up of judges for the 2018 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. Today, meet YA author, Margot McGovern. * The Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction calls for a focus on women’s stories. What’s your view on the current state of women’s stories* in…
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Teen drama-fest Riverdale is well into its second season, yet only now have I finally succumbed to the show that has been clogging all social media with gossip, theories, and fangirling for the past twelve months. I’m a fan of dark dramas, so Riverdale had always intrigued me, but I didn’t know the true extent…
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‘Water can be any shape, it just depends on the container,’ my brother eloquently said as we drove to the cinema. It was a good point – as he predicted, the new Guillermo del Toro film The Shape of Water fits into many movie genre moulds. It is a monster movie, an arthouse film, a…
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I can still close my eyes and remember summer holidays as a kid. The car trip we made each year, to the small beach town on the other side of the mountain ranges. The smell of eucalyptus and the soaked earth under the vine tangled rain forest, swallowing up the road as our car made…
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