The Claimant wins prestigious writers award

Wergaia/Wemba Wemba writer Susie Anderson has won the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers for her short story ‘The Claimant’.

Sponsored by Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, the Prize, that includes $5000 snd an optional writing residency at the college, was established in 2014 to recognise the talent of young Indigenous writers across Australia.

Wergaia/Wemba Wemba writer Susie Anderson.

Judges Mykaela Saunders and Evelyn Araluen selected Susie Anderson, with Kyrah Honner and Isabella Eichler-Onus second and third.

“In this powerful work, Anderson weaves together multiple perspectives and points of vision: parabolic in shape, the story begins with an elder readying herself for an important meeting, then cuts to a white real estate developer reminiscing on his settler-colonial family history, then to the musings of a tree once chosen to give its skin for a canoe, there judges wrote.

“The story holds so much history expertly and challenges expectations of resolution or closure.

Kyrah Honner’s ‘Country Keeps You’ was described as a “thrilling story”.

“This piece feels like it’s brimming with potential for each thread to be followed and explored in great depth. The writing is so sharp, fresh and spectral – and fills us with excitement for Anderson’s future in prose.”

Susie’s collection the body country was shortlisted for the 2023 Victorian and New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.

Kyrah Honner’s ‘Country Keeps You’ was described as a “thrilling story that moves between tenderness, humour and bush horror”.

Isabella Eichler-Onus’s work ‘Pyrophyte’ was described as a “bittersweet journey”.

Honner, a proud Birri Gubba and Luritja woman enjoys exploration of the uncanny in her writing and loves to understand the psyche of characters and why they do what they do.

And Isabella Eichler-Onus, a proud Gunditjmara writer’s work, ‘Pyrophyte’ was described as a “bittersweet journey through memory and culture. On a dark and lonely night in the bush, Jarra discovers an extra shadow joining him”.