UQP announces 2022 recipient of the UQP Quentin Bryce Award
UQP is pleased to announce that the 2022 recipient of the UQP Quentin Bryce Award is Mirandi Riwoe for her dazzling story collection, The Burnished Sun, to be published in April 2022.
The award, which recognises The Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce, is for a book on UQP’s list each year that celebrates women’s lives and/or promotes gender equality. Mirandi Riwoe will receive $5000 in prize money.
Of selecting The Burnished Sun from UQP’s 2022 list, Dame Quentin Bryce says:
‘What a remarkable and skilful writer Mirandi Riwoe is. I was an admirer of her novel, Stone Sky Gold Mountain, but the sheer breadth of talent showcased across this collection of fiction is astounding.
What unites The Burnished Sun is Mirandi’s glorious prose, her empathic imagination, and her focus on women, especially those who are marginalised and disenfranchised. I highly commend The Burnished Sun to readers and am delighted to select it as the 2022 UQP Quentin Bryce Award recipient.’
‘I am so grateful and thrilled to be the recipient of the 2022 Quentin Bryce Award. The Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce is a staunch supporter of the arts and I am very proud that my book about women and children who are often elided or forgotten has been chosen to receive this award named in her honour. Thank you very much Quentin Bryce and UQP.’ – Mirandi Riwoe
Dame Quentin Bryce and Mirandi Riwoe will appear at a live event together later this year.
About The Burnished Sun
From the award-winning author of Stone Sky Gold Mountain come these superbly crafted stories that explore the inner lives of those who are often ignored or misunderstood.
We follow a migrant mother who yearns to feel welcomed at a kids’ party in a local park; a young skateboarder caught between showing loyalty and being accepted; and an Indonesian maid working far from home who longs for the son she’s left behind. Bookending this collection are two stunning novellas: Annah the Javanese re-imagines the world of one of Paul Gauguin’s models in nineteenth-century Paris, while the highly acclaimed The Fish Girl reworks a classic W Somerset Maugham story from the perspective of a young Indonesian woman.
With rich emotional insight and a light touch, these wide-ranging stories reveal hidden desires and human fragility.
About Mirandi Riwoe
Mirandi Riwoe is the author of The Fish Girl and Stone Sky Gold Mountain, which won the 2020 Queensland Literary Award – Fiction Book Award and the inaugural ARA Historical Novel Prize and was shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize, and longlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Her work has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Review of Australian Fiction, Griffith Review and Best Summer Stories. Mirandi has a PhD in Creative Writing and Literary Studies and lives in Brisbane.
About the UQP Quentin Bryce Award
The award recognises The Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce, who is an alumna of The University of Queensland and was the first woman appointed as a faculty member of its Law School. From 2003 to 2008 she served as the twenty-fourth Governor of Queensland, and from 2008 to 2014 she was the twenty-fifth Governor General of Australia, the first woman to hold the office. Throughout her career Quentin Bryce has been a strong supporter of the arts and Australia’s cultural life, and she is an ambassador for many related organisations, including the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and the Stella Prize.
To honour Quentin Bryce’s impressive career and legacy, University of Queensland Press established the UQP Quentin Bryce Award in 2020. The award recognises one book on UQP’s list each year that celebrates women’s lives and/or promotes gender equality. There is $5000 in prize money for the selected author.
The inaugural recipient of the award in 2020 was Ellen van Neerven’s second poetry collection, Throat, which went on to be recognised in multiple prizes, including winning Book of the Year at the 2021 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. In 2021 the recipient was Sarah Walker’s exceptional collection of essays, The First Time I Thought I Was Dying, with its examination of our unruly bodies and minds, and the limitations of consent, intimacy and control.
