Barbara Jefferis Award 2009 Now Open

Entries for the Barbara Jefferis Award 2009 are now open.

Valued at $35,000, the Award is offered annually for “the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society”.

Barbara Jefferis was a feminist, a founding member of the Australian Society of Authors, its first woman President and, in the words of Thomas Keneally, “a rare being amongst authors, being both a fine writer but also organisationally gifted. She was a professional and internationally published writer long before most of us dreamed of such things”.

The Award is paid from the Barbara Jefferis Literary Fund, which was established by a bequest from Barbara Jefferis’s husband, ABC film critic John Hinde, who died in 2006. The Australian Society of Authors is Trustee of the Fund.

The judges are academic Bernadette Brennan, author Nadia Wheatley, and literary editor Susan Wyndham.

Entries close on Friday, 28 November 2008 – except for novels published in December 2008 which have a closing date of Friday, 9 January 2009.

Last year’s winner, Rhyll McMaster’s Feather Man, is a September selection for the American Booksellers Association Indie Next List. This prestigious listing guarantees promotion in independent bookshops across the United States. McMaster's book sits alongside the latest from such notables as Annie Proulx and Paul Auster.

For more information, full terms and conditions, and official entry form for the Barbara Jefferis Award, go to: http://www.asauthors.org/