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Wednesday, 2 December 2009

UWA Publishing author, Emily Ballou has been awarded the 2009 Wesley Michel Wright Prize for Poetry for her collection of poems entitled The Darwin Poems.

Ballou was chosen from 152 entries, with the judges saying they were very impressed with her work specifically.

The Darwin Poems, published in April this year, is a sensitive and beautifully imagined verse-portrait of Charles Darwin's life.

"At a time when the image of Charles Darwin is becoming carved in stone, Emily Ballou, with microscopic attention to detail, breathes a life force back into the fossil," Director of UWA Publishing Terri-ann White said.

The Prize is valued at just over $4,000. The Darwin Poems is Ballou's first book of poetry.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Poet, screenwriter and novelist Emily Ballou was born in the United States in 1968 and moved to Australia in 1991. In 1996, she was a recipient of the Australian Film Commission's New Screenwriters Scheme for her first feature screenplay, Sadie X-Ray. In 1997, she was awarded the Judith Wright Prize for Poetry for her poem, Enter.

She worked with Gillian Armstrong adapting Helen Hodgman's Waiting for Matindi for the screen, and wrote the short film Mittens, which was Fox Searchlight's 2004 contender for the Academy Awards. Her first novel, Father Lands, set during the desegregation of the school system in the United States, was published in 2002 and is currently being adapted into a film.

Random House published her first children's picture book, One Blue Sock, and her second novel, Aphelion, was recently published by Picador. Emily was named one of The Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelists of 2003.


Media references

Sylvia Defendi (UWA Publishing) 61 8 6488 6804 / 0417 967 415
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs) 61 8 6488 5563 / 0432 637 716

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