The Peter Blazey Fellowship

The Peter Blazey Fellowship was established to honour the memory of Peter Blazey - journalist, author and gay activist - and has been made available through the generosity of Clive Blazey and Tim Herbert, brother and partner of Peter Blazey.

Blazey was born in Melbourne in 1939 and worked for the Australian, the National Times and as a regular columnist for OutRage magazine. He published a number of books, including a political biography of Henry Bolte, and was co-editor of the short fiction anthology, Love Cries. His personal memoir, ScrewLoose, appeared after his death from AIDS in 1997.

"Peter was someone with a lion's head of loose ends that could never fit into some ideologically sound and tidy space. Storyteller, mythomane, and one of the last great conversationalists in a country wary of the free flow of uncensored language, he was a comet who flashed his tail at everyone."

- Tim Herbert, OutRage, 1997

The Peter Blazey Fellowship was launched by the Hon. Justice Michael Kirby in May 2004. The Fellowship is awarded annually to writers in the non-fiction fields of biography, autobiography and life writing and is intended to further a work in progress.

Applications will be judged on literary merit, and the winner will be supported in his or her work by a cash prize of $15 000, and a one-month writer-in-residency at the Australian Centre.

Download Application Form (pdf 140kb)

2008 Peter Blazey Fellowship

Andrew Lindsay

$10, 000 to Andrew Lindsay for his work in progress The God of Morphine. Andrew is the author of two novels, The Breadmaker's Carnival and The Slapping Man. The first of these became a bestseller, was joint winner of the Jim Hamilton Award, and appeared in German and US editions. His second novel was shortlisted for the FAW (Victoria) Christina Stead Award. He has written four oral histories of the Collingwood community, the most recent of these was When Fish Have Feathers. He plays flute and saxophones with Melbourne broken lounge trio Blind Man Driving.

$5, 000 to Dmetri Kakmi for his work in progress Motherland. Dmetri Kakmi was born in Turkey to Greek parents. He is an essayist and critic. He also works part-time as senior editor at Penguin Books. His memoir Motherland will be published by Giramondo in 2008. 'When We Were Young', an anthology he compiled and edited, will be released by Penguin in October 2007. He is currently writing a novel set in the Australian bush.

Dmetri Kakmi

Download the judges' report (pdf 139kb).

PAST WINNERS

2007 - Judith Pugh, for her work-in-progress, In My Seventies. Her account of living with the painter Clifton Pugh, and of the art scene in which they moved during the 1970s encompasses the larger cultural politics of the period, interwoven with an intimate and nuanced analysis of the troubles Pugh carried with him from his experiences in the Second World War. With remarkable psychological depth and control of tone, Judith Pugh’s eloquent yet sparse prose provides an arresting portrait of a public figure and a compelling private story.

2006 - Robert Kenny, ‘The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathanael Pepper & the Ruptured World’ (to be published by Scribe Publications).

2005 - Jennifer Compton, for her work titled "Who Doesn't Want Me to Dance".

2004 - Sara Hardy for her biography of Australian landscape designer, Edna Walling. "The Unusual Life of Edna Walling" was published in April 2005 by Allen and Unwin