Excellence in Tasmania’s creative and academic endeavours …

Lucinda Bray
… to be honoured in memory of Dr Erica Bell

Such was the impact the late Dr Erica Bell had on Tasmania’s medical and literary world, her husband has
established a Foundation in her name to celebrate excellence in Tasmanian literature and medical research.

The Erica Bell Foundation will be unveiled tomorrow, comprising of Tasmania’s largest annual cash prizes of
$10,000 to be awarded to the winners of the Erica Bell Foundation Medical Research Award and the Erica Bell
Foundation Literature Award.

Erica Bell Foundation founder and Erica’s husband, Dr Bastian Seidel, said the two awards represented the
highest annual awards of their kind in Tasmania, with each winner receiving $10,000, each runner-up receiving
$1,000, and the second runners-up receiving $500.

“Erica published over 100 academic research papers and five books during her 10 years at the University of
Tasmania, as well as publishing two historical novels,” Dr Seidel said.

“Her first novel, The Voyage of the Shuckenoor, was launched at the 2008 Melbourne Writers Festival, while
her second novel Enzam and the Just Prince was published just one week before her sudden passing in July
2014.

“Erica also worked at the cutting edge of medical research and was deeply committed to her academic work
and Tasmania. She was working as an Associate Professor at the Wicking Dementia Research and Education
Centre at the University of Tasmania at the time of her passing, aged 52.”

The Erica Bell Foundation is supported in-kind by the University of Tasmania (Faculty of Health) and the
Tasmanian Writers’ Centre.