The Trust Company \ Philanthropy \ Awards and scholarships \ Kathleen Mitchell Award for Young Writers
Philanthropy
Kathleen Mitchell Award for Young Writers
Supporting young Australian authors
The Kathleen Mitchell Award is a biennial Award dedicated to encouraging young Australian authors to achieve their dreams.
It was established in 1996 by the will of the late Kathleen Adele Mitchell. Her aim was to encourage “the advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature, to improve the educational style of the authors, and to provide them with additional amounts and thus enable them to improve their literary efforts".
Are you eligible?
To be eligible for this award, you should be an author aged 29 years or less at the time of your book’s first publication.
You must be a resident of Australia for the 12 months preceding the close of entries date and be either Australian or British born or a naturalised Australian.
The award’s value
The 2012 award value is $15,000.
How to apply
Applications for the 2012 award have now closed judging will commence.
Winners will be announced early June.
The Kathleen Mitchell Award 2010
On 11 May 2010, Trust announced the winner of the Kathleen Mitchell Award for 2010.
One of the country's most talked about young writers Nam Le has been awarded the Kathleen Mitchell Award for his critically acclaimed debut book The Boat, published by Penguin Australia.
Trust congratulates Nam, an extraordinarily talented young author, on his achievement.
The judges described The Boat as a short story collection of astonishing breadth and power, a deeply moving work of extraordinary grace and invention.
To read more about this winning novel and its author enter here.
The judges also praised 27-year-old author Craig Silvey for his novel Jasper Jones (Allen & Unwin). The judges described Jasper Jones as a highly engaging novel with a distinctive voice and noted that they expected great things of Silvey.
The Kathleen Mitchell Award judges for 2010 were Susan Geason, Pauline Fitzgerald and Camilla Nelson.
Previous Winners
Previous winners of the Kathleen Mitchell Award include:
- 2008 Randa Abdel-Fattah Ten things i hate about me (Pan Macmillan Australia)
- 2006 Markus Zusak The Book Thief (Picador)
- 2004 Lucy Lehmann The Showgirl and the Brumby (Random House Australia)
- 2000 Julia Leigh The Hunter
- 1998 James Bradley Wrack
- 1996 Sonya Hartnett Sleeping Dogs
Further information
The Trust Company is trustee for the Kathleen Mitchell Award. For more information please contact Christina Piazza, Scholarships and Awards
Coordinator on 1800 622 812 or trustawards@thetrustcompany.com.au
