the winner of the olga masters short story award for 2021
The Mowing
By Ivy Ireland
Ivy Ireland is the author of three poetry collections: Incidental Complications (2007), Porch Light (2015) and The Owl Inside (2020). Ivy’s divergent career paths have included bookstore owner, magician’s assistant, harpist, cabaret performer and tutor in Creative Writing. Ivy’s literary awards include the Australian Young Poet Fellowship, the Harri Jones Memorial Prize, the Thunderbolt Prize, the Newcastle Poetry Prize local award, and she was the runner-up in the UC International Poetry Prize. Ivy completed her Ph.D. at the University of Newcastle and her poetry, essays and reviews have been widely published in journals and anthologies.
“I feel completely honoured to have been awarded the Olga Masters Short Story Award. I am very grateful to the Masters family, South East Arts, Island Magazine and The South Coast Writers Centre for the opportunity to enter this prize. I am additionally so thankful that the judges, Julie Janson and Ben Walter, found my wee tale, “The Mowing,” to be worthy of the award after reading through such an abundance of entries. Rural life in Australia is a complex, ever-shifting theme and the short story is such a delicate, perhaps difficult, literary genre, with its precise drive to capture ephemeral, often enigmatic moments, so I feel doubly privileged to be recognised. To put it simply: I’m stoked. Thanks again. ”
the RUNNER-UP of the olga masters short story award
Verge
By Catherine Deery
Catherine Deery lives in Bendigo on Dja Dja Wurrung land. She has a healthy obsession with reading and writing short fiction. Her stories have won the Stuart Hadow Short Story Competition and the Odyssey House Short Story Competition, and have been commended and shortlisted in various awards, including the AlburyCity Short Story Award. She grew up in a farming family, and spent many years living on a farm at Quandialla, on Wiradjuri land.