{"id":4004,"date":"2020-10-28T10:01:24","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T23:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=4004"},"modified":"2020-10-28T11:33:22","modified_gmt":"2020-10-28T01:03:22","slug":"announcing-winners-hometown-haunts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2020\/10\/announcing-winners-hometown-haunts\/","title":{"rendered":"Four contributors chosen from national competition to join all-star Australian YA horror anthology … just in time for Halloween!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Four stories chosen from a competitive national open call-out will join some of Australia\u2019s most celebrated YA authors for Hometown Haunts<\/em>, a YA horror anthology published by Wakefield Press and funded by the Australia Council\u2019s 2020 Resilience Fund \u2013 Create.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Four contributors chosen from national competition to join all-star Australian YA horror anthology … just in time for Halloween!<\/h1>\n

\u2018I\u2019m so excited to be announcing the final four additions to the Hometown Haunts<\/em> line-up,\u2019 says YA author and anthology editor Poppy Nwosu, who supports her writing career with a day job in marketing at Wakefield Press. She led a panel of Wakefield Press judges, including submissions manager Maddy Sexton, YA publisher Jo Case and director Michael Bollen, through several rounds of judging over 120 stories submitted, including a final \u2018blind\u2019 read.<\/p>\n

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\u2018We were specifically looking for stories that showcased a strong voice, unique ideas and a horror element that felt intrinsic to the narrative of the piece,\u2019 she says. \u2018We had a difficult time \u2013 and many lively discussions \u2013 as we selected just four winners from a very strong and exciting pool of young adult fiction voices.\u2019<\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The four winning stories are wide-ranging in subject and style. An intense, lyrical story about a high-achieving student literally monstered by her anxiety, by celebrated Adelaide YA author Margot McGovern<\/strong>. A harrowing dive into toxic masculinity and bloody rites in a dystopic future Australia by Melbourne queer, non-binary fiction writer and poet Emma Osborne<\/strong>. A sly, unsettling, black-humoured tale of ancestral ghosts and the age-old question of what we\u2019ll trade for what we desire by Queensland children\u2019s and YA author Marianna Shek<\/strong>. And a visceral howl of teenage angst and rage that literally transforms its protagonist by 21-year-old Melbourne screenwriter and horror fan Felix Wilkins<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Hometown Haunts<\/em> features YA horror stories from commissioned contributors Wai Chim<\/strong>, Sarah Epstein<\/strong>, Alison Evans<\/strong>, Poppy Nwosu<\/strong>, Lisa Fuller<\/strong>, Holden Sheppard<\/strong>, Jared Thomas<\/strong> and this year\u2019s Children\u2019s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year for Older Readers winner, Vikki Wakefield<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Learn more about the selected entries:<\/h1>\n

\"Margot<\/p>\n

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Margot McGovern says, ‘I\u2019ve always loved horror, particularly as a teenager it was the genre I escaped into. For me, it\u2019s a safe place to confront deep fears and anxieties that are otherwise difficult to voice. I\u2019m absolutely thrilled to have \u2018Euryhaline\u2019 selected for the Hometown Haunts: #LoveOzYA Horror Tales<\/em> anthology and am looking forward to working with Poppy Nwosu and the team at Wakefield Press.’<\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Margot McGovern<\/strong> is an Adelaide-based author and lifelong horror junkie. She holds a creative writing PhD from Flinders University and her debut novel Neverland<\/em> (Penguin Random House Aus) was shortlisted for the 2020 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and the 2015 Text Prize. When she\u2019s not writing, she loves spending time at the beach and her love of the ocean and sea myths often spills into her fiction.<\/p>\n

\"Emma<\/p>\n

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On being selected, Emma Osborne says, \u2018This story has a special place in my heart, and I\u2019m so excited that it has found such a wonderful home, amongst such fabulous company!\u2019<\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Emma Osborne<\/strong> is a queer, non-binary fiction writer and poet from Melbourne, Australia. Their writing has appeared in Uncanny Magazine<\/em>, Nightmare Magazine<\/em>, Shock Totem: Tales of the Macabre and Twisted<\/em>, Apex Magazine<\/em>, Queers Destroy Science Fiction<\/em>, Pseudopod<\/em>, the Review of Australian Fiction<\/em>, and GlitterShip<\/em>. They are a graduate of the 2016 Clarion West Writers Workshop. Emma currently lives in Melbourne with their two cats. You can find them on Twitter as @redscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Mariann<\/p>\n

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Marianna says, ‘I’m thrilled to be one of the lucky four writers selected for this exciting anthology and I can’t wait to read the works of the other writers. Thank you Wakefield Press for applying for the Australia Council\u2019s 2020 Resilience Fund \u2013 Create. The arts have experienced so many setbacks with Covid and this is a great opportunity for emerging writers that has come out of it.\u2019<\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Marianna Shek<\/strong> is a children\u2019s and young adult fiction writer with a PhD in transmedia storytelling. In 2020, she was the winner of the CYA Conference fiction prize, shortlisted for the Affirm Press Mentorship Award at Varuna House and longlisted for the Queensland Stories, Songs and Rhymes picture book project at State Library of Queensland. She was awarded the 2017 Conflux short story competition and shortlisted in the Deborah Cass
\nWriting Prize in 2018. Her short stories have been published by Space and Time Magazine<\/em>, Serenity Press and Griffith University.<\/p>\n

\"Felix<\/p>\n

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Felix says, \u2018I couldn\u2019t be happier that my odious, nauseating, abhorrent story has a place amongst some of the finest voices in modern Australian literature.\u2019<\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Felix Wilkins<\/strong> is a screenwriter, video editor, and filmmaker based in Melbourne. When he\u2019s not sweating over how to portray himself in his own author bio, he\u2019s likely to be watching classic horror movies, producing content for his production company, Yabba Films, or trying to convince people that Toni Collette is the greatest Australian actress of all time.<\/p>\n

Congratulations to the winning entries, and a huge thank you to everyone who submitted to Wakefield Press.<\/h1>\n

Hometown Haunts: #LoveOzYA Horror Tales<\/em> will be published by Wakefield Press on 31 October 2021. Learn more about the anthology here<\/a>.<\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four stories chosen from a competitive national open call-out will join some of Australia\u2019s most celebrated YA authors for Hometown Haunts, a YA horror anthology published by Wakefield Press and funded by the Australia Council\u2019s 2020 Resilience Fund \u2013 Create.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[398,759],"tags":[780,903,909,906],"class_list":["post-4004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-story","category-young-adult","tag-loveozya","tag-australian-ya","tag-hometown-haunts","tag-publishing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-12A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4004"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4028,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions\/4028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}