The acclaimed writer, critic and poet Fiona Wright has won the prestigious Kibble award for Australian women writers, taking $30,000 for Small Acts of Disappearance, a collection of essays about anorexia.
Small Acts of Disappearance: Essays on Hunger is the second book from Wright, 33, who published her first collection of poetry, Knuckled, in 2011. Also shortlisted for this year’s Stella prize and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, it offers a deeply personal insight into life with anorexia, which began for Wright in high school and became life-threatening over the next 10 years.
Wright told Guardian Australia that while she has been thrilled with the book’s reception, she “absolutely did not” expect it.
“I think part of that is because I’m used to being a poet ... it’s an entirely different game,” she said. “But also to me it’s quite a strange book – it’s not narrative, it’s essays, it’s a difficult subject matter. I really thought it was going to fly under the radar. But I’m very pleased to be wrong.”
Writing about anorexia was also never part of the plan.
“I really resisted it for a long time,” she said. “I didn’t know how to do it, for starters, but I also wasn’t sure that I’d get anything out of it. But I was wrong.
“There’s something really empowering about looking back over horrible things that happened and making something beautiful out of them – or just making something that makes sense out of them. Because, at the time, when I became ill, I really didn’t understand what was happening ... and I had no control over what was happening either.
“[Writing about it] did make me feel very powerful, in a very strange way.”
Wright’s work was shortlisted alongside Elizabeth Harrower’s story collection A Few Days in the Country and Drusilla Modjeska’s memoir Second Half First. On behalf of the judging panel of the Kibble award, which is awarded for fiction or non-fiction classified as “life-writing”, emeritus professor Elizabeth Webby praised Wright’s collection for its uncommon take on adversity.
“With the skilful use of language seen in her prize-winning poetry, Wright writes frankly and movingly about a difficult and very personal subject,” she said. “Unlike many memoirs of illness and recovery, hers is not a story of triumph over adversity. The essay form allows her to resist closure, while also providing insights into her reading, her travels and her interactions with others.”
Wright says the prize is not only an honour but one that offers welcome relief. “I just finished my PhD and have no foreseeable income for the next six months, so it really will ease the burden. It’s going to be really great to spend more time writing than I would be able to otherwise.”
Named after Nita Kibble, the first woman librarian with the State Library of New South Wales, the Kibble award sits alongside the Stella prize as one of the most prestigious awards for women writers in Australia. The $5,000 Dobbie Literary award, for a first-time published female author, was also awarded on Thursday, to Lucy Treloar for her novel Salt Creek.
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