2024 Fresh Ink Prize Winner

Newcastle writer Acey Monaro has been awarded the 2024 Fresh Ink Emerging Writer Prize, which includes $5000 for professional development and a week-long residency at Varuna in the Blue Mountains.

Acey is a Newcastle musician, housepainter and emerging writer originally from Wonnarua country. She is currently undertaking her MA in Creative Writing at the University of Sydney and is interested in Australian Gothic and the weird. Acey was also shortlisted in 2023.

This is the fourth year of the prize, which was established by Newcastle Writers Festival to support emerging regional NSW writers.

Acey’s entry “is an excerpt from an Australian Gothic short story called The Charm, in which the protagonist, Gus, has just moved to a new town with her mum and twin siblings. On the morning of her thirteenth birthday, she discovers a charm in her bedroom drawer which seems to trigger a sexual awakening. However, she soon discovers a grim divergence between the sensual life she fantasises about and the reality of exploitation.”

Judges’ Anna Downes and David Owen Kelly said: “Beguiling the reader with its curious mix of innocence and foreboding, The Charm performs its namesake perfectly as a girl rewarded with an orange bikini for her thirteenth birthday goes to the local pool and tries to negotiate relationships with the inhabitants of a new town. We loved the evocative writing, excellent characterisation, and the spellbinding vulnerability conjured by a young protagonist struggling to understand her place and value in the world.”

Congratulations to the shortlisted writers Carly McTavish (Bawley Point), Monique Wallace (Newcastle) and Sylvia Wilczynski (Byron Bay).

Thank you to the judging panel and to Elephant in the Room wine label for providing the prize money, Varuna, and Create NSW.

Pictured left to right: Sylvia Wilczynski, Monique Wallace, Acey Monara and Carly McTavish.