The shortlist for the 2022 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award has been announced with four Western Australian writers in the running.

The City of Fremantle Hungerford Award is in its 32nd year. The award is given biennially to a fiction or narrative non-fiction manuscript by a Western Australian author who has not been published in book form.

The shortlisted writers were selected from 90 submissions by debut Western Australia writers. This year’s shortlist includes, Joy Kilian-Essert, Gerard McCann, Marie O’Rourke and Molly Schmidt. All are in the running for $15000 in prize money from the City of Fremantle and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press.

Fremantle Press Publisher Georgia Richter praised the shortlisted writers, stating, ‘Joy Kilian-Essert’s collection of short stories, The Slow Patience of the Sea & other stories, contains gems of observation exploring everyday people and settings in new and unexpected ways. Gerard McCann’s Tell Me a Story is an immensely readable memoir. His handling of confronting subject matter is unstintingly honest and open-hearted. Marie O’Rourke’s collection of narrative non-fiction essays in Kintsugi contains astute and luminous meditations on memory and family connection. Finally, Molly Schmidt’s novel Salt River Road is about five siblings left to deal with the repercussions of losing their mother. It is an engrossing prose and verse novel revealing a tale of hope and healing.’

The winner will be announced on Thursday 20 October at Fremantle Arts Centre.

Shortlist:

The Slow Patience of the Sea & other stories by Joy Kilian-Essert
Tell Me the Story by Gerard McCann
Kintsugi by Marie O’Rourke
Salt River Road by Molly Schmidt