Um…opened up my email this morning to find I had been announced the winner of the Overland VU Short Story Prize, after finding out two weeks ago that I had been shortlisted! I can’t really believe it, but what an incredible honour. Overland is such a wonderful journal. And also – big thanks to the judges AND to Overland and Victoria University for supporting emerging writers! So very encouraging.  My story, ‘Broad Hatchet’, along with the full judges’ report and two stories by the runners up, will appear in the next edition of Overland, which comes out in about two weeks. I also get $6000 prize money (like WUT?!?!). Goes to show how dedicated these organisations are to supporting writers in their work.

The judges said: ‘Broad hatchet’ takes the classic Australian short story – pioneer mythology, man versus landscape – and reshapes it…[it’s] ‘intimate, subversive and finely wrought’. I’m pretty gobsmacked by their kind words.

Congrats too to runners up Ben Walter and Ashleigh Synnott – can’t wait to read their stories, which will also appear in the September Overland.

And of course special thanks to my babes Alexis Drevikovsky, Ash Hanson, Stu Harper, Elanna Nolan and Meaghan Young for all their feedback on early drafts of the story 🙂