The Van Diemen Anthology 2019.
The biennial Van Diemen History Prize fosters quality writing about Tasmanian history for articles aimed at a general audience. Good writing about history can be engaging, insightful, poignant or intriguing, but the underlying research will always be authentic and rigorous.
The winning entry will receive a cash prize of $500 and publication in Forty South magazine. A selection of the best entries will be published in an edited volume, The Van Diemen History Anthology 2021 (publication estimated to be in mid-2021).
Details
- The Prize is open to Australian citizens and Australian permanent residents.
- Closing date: 21 September 2020.
- Fee: $20 per article. Click here to find out how you can pay.
- Terms and conditions: click here.
- Submit online here.
Judges 2020-21
- Professor Stefan Petrow teaches Australian, Tasmanian, and European history at the University of Tasmania.
- Kristyn Harman is an Associate Professor in History at the University of Tasmania.
- Paige Gleeson, a sixth generation Tasmanian and PhD Candidate in History at the University of Tasmania, won the inaugural Van Diemen History Prize in 2018 with her entry, Fantasy of the Past: Women’s History at the Cascade Female Factory.
- Chris Champion is editor of Forty South magazine and a director of Forty South Publishing.
How did the Van Diemen History Prize come about?
Forty South Publishing director Lucinda Sharp explains: “The idea for the Van Diemen History Prize came out of a conversation with Associate Professor Kristyn Harman, of the University of Tasmania. Her idea was then honed to fit the underlying philosophy of Forty South Tasmania – high-quality writing on a Tasmanian theme, aimed at a general audience.”
The Prize was first held in 2018-19. The winning entry was written by Paige Gleeson (see above). The top ten entries were published in The Van Diemen Anthology 2019, which was launched at the Tasmanian Writers and Readers Festival that same year.
The launch was celebrated with a panel presentation facilitated by historian Nicholas Brodie. Panel members included the competition judges, the winner, and two runners up. Click here to see the 2018-19 prize list.
An excerpt from Paige Gleeson’s The Fantasy of the Past: Women’s History at the Cascade Female Factory
The site of the Cascade Female Factory is swamped in the cold shadows of autumn dusk long before the rest of the town. An inky blue mountain and steep hillsides lined with weatherboard houses encase what remains of the site. It is situated at the bottom of a valley, alongside a creek that runs down off Mt Wellington/kunanyi, known to expand in streams of flood water to envelop the factory site itself during heavy rain. Even in drier times, a wetness lingers in the air once the noon sun passes, leaving a smell of damp sandstone, though few colonial buildings remain standing.
It was here in the early 1840s a group of three hundred convict women was reported to have turned in unison to flash backsides at the most important man in Van Diemen’s Land, Governor John Franklin, slapping their buttocks like bongo drums.
You can read the full text of the piece here.
