The Copyright Agency award support Authors & Artists

The Copyright Agency has awarded a total of $50,000 to a Western Australian artist, an author from Brisbane and a graphic novelist from Melbourne, through its ‘Create’ Career Fund. The fund provides mid-to-late career writers and visual artists with crucial financial support needed to write, research and create their next work.

Recipients of the latest ‘Create’ Career Fund grants are:

Western Australian visual artist, Pilar Mata Dupont for her video-based project that explores the theories of narrative, autobiography and female identity using documentary and fictional elements. Amount awarded $20,000.

Brisbane author, Angela Slatter to develop a full-length fantasy novel The Briar Book of the Dead, from her short stories Bitterwood and Sourdough. Amount awarded $15,000.

Melbourne historian and writer Alex McDermott to create The Devil Collects, a graphic novel history on the rise and fall of Marvellous Melbourne from 1887 to 1893. The weekly episodic comic book format, developed with comic book maker Bernard Caleo, will deliver to readers’ mobile phones and tablets, and be collated into a final physical book. Amount awarded $15,000.

“The high calibre of the entries submitted to Copyright Agency’s Create Career Fund is reflective of the extraordinary talent of writers and artists we have in this country,” the Copyright Agency’s CEO, Adam Suckling, says.

“Many Australian writers and artists survive on very low wages, with the annual income for a practising Australian author averaging $13,000.

“The Create Career Fund aims to support creativity and provide opportunities for creators to keep creating great works. This is not only necessary, but critical to the creative livelihood of the nation,” Mr Suckling adds.

This year’s eclectic array of submissions were judged by visual artist and lecturer Marian Crawford; writer and award-winning poet Jill Jones; and writer, editor and publishing consultant Craig Munro – all of whom described the works as “diverse, moving and arresting”.

Applicants to the Create Career Fund are able to apply for grants of $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000.  Two rounds are held every year with $50,000 available in each funding round. The next funding round will open for applications in mid-March.