ADELAIDE FESTIVAL LITERATURE AWARDS

Mrs GERAGHTY (Torrens) (15:06): My question is to the Minister Assisting the Minister for the Arts. Can the minister inform the house about the opening of nominations for the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature?

The Hon. C.C. FOX (Bright—Minister for Transport Services, Minister Assisting the Minister for the Arts) (15:06): I thank the member for Torrens for this question, and I recognise her long commitment to reading.

An honourable member: Weeding?

The Hon. C.C. FOX: Reading—literature, reading.

An honourable member: I thought you said 'weeding'.

The Hon. C.C. FOX: Not weeding, no, although she also likes weeding, I'm sure. I am very pleased to announce that the nominations for the 2014 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature have now opened. There is a very generous prize pool of $165,000, and it is one of the richest and most competitive literary prizes in Australia. The awards were introduced in 1986 by the South Australian Labor government, and they have been held every two years since, with the 2014 awards featuring a $15,000 increase in the prestigious Premier's Award, to $25,000. That award recognises the best published book amongst all of the awards presented.

This is now one of the most valuable literary prizes in the country, and it is a great opportunity to highlight the best of our writers and reward excellence in the literary community. In terms of what is specifically available for South Australian writers, the Premier's Award is one of six national awards, along with two awards and three fellowships, giving our local talent in South Australia a real opportunity to shine.

This year, I am also very pleased to announce that there will be a new fellowship for South Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers, which will be $15,000. It is open to South Australian ATSI writers in the genres of fiction, literary non-fiction, poetry and playwriting. In addition, I am sure that everybody in the house will be pleased to hear that a fellowship for South Australian writers for young people has been renamed in honour of the renowned South Australian author Max Fatchen, who made such a long and significant contribution to children's literature in this state and in this country.

The South Australian awards are the $10,000 Jill Blewett Playwright's Award and the Wakefield Press Unpublished Manuscript Award, which includes obviously a $10,000 cash prize and publication of the winning manuscript by Wakefield Press. The three South Australian fellowships designed to provide South Australian writers with a day-to-day living allowance while they pursue their projects are the Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship, open to writers working in the areas of fiction, poetry, drama, scriptwriting, autobiography, essays, major histories, literary criticism or other expository or analytical prose, the Max Fatchen Fellowship, obviously, and the inaugural prize, which I discussed previously.

For all of those who are interested, there is ample time to enter. Your nominations need to be received by Friday 28 June. I would encourage anyone who is interested in these awards to visit the website, www.arts.sa.gov.au, for more information. I should say that those people who have won these prizes in the past have actually been very significant writers, and it is something that we are very, very proud to support in this state.