News Archive

UWA Publishing author Simone Lazaroo has been shortlisted for the 2011 Barbara Jefferis Award.

Simone's novel Sustenance is set in the Elsewhere Hotel on an island renowned for its hospitality and beauty, where the Balinese staff and their Western guests are unexpectedly taken hostage.

During the overnight siege, the hotel's cook, Perpetua de Mello, is compelled by the crisis to provide spiritual and physical sustenance as best she can to the guests, staff and their poorly nourished captors.

Reflecting on individuals' struggles to find meaning and love in the face of death, Sustenance is a compelling novel that reveals surprising ways in which people redeem themselves through fear and grief.

Director at UWA Publishing Terri-ann White said she was thrilled that this prestigious and lucrative prize has featured one of UWAP's books in three of its four years of operation.

The award, valued at $35,000, honours Australian novels with high standards of literary merit that depict women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empower the status of women and girls in society.

The winner will be announced on April 9, 2011.

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