Scribe Publications is thrilled to announce that the winner of the 2012 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize for writers 35 and over is Amy Espeseth for 'Trouble Telling the Weather'. Amy wins $15,000 and a book contract with Scribe. Amy Espeseth's 'Trouble Telling the Weather' is a novel-in-stories that unfolds through the viewpoints of five characters who live in Siren, Wisconsin, and share a difficult past.
The judges were Blanche Clark (Books Editor, Herald Sun), Jon Page (CEO, Pages & Pages Bookstore, and President of the ABA) and Aviva Tuffield (Associate Publisher, Fiction, Scribe). Jon Page praised 'Trouble Telling the Weather' as 'an accomplished and absorbing story that follows a cast of interconnected characters with skill and empathy'.
Blanche Clark said: 'An assured tone and vivid descriptions bring to life the bleakness and beauty of Siren, Wisconsin, the setting for a poignant tale that compassionately, but unflinchingly, traverses the lives of five characters struggling with racial, economic and social disparity.'
Aviva Tuffield added: 'Amy Espeseth is such a talented and assured writer, and the links between these stories make “Trouble Telling the Weather†much more than the sum of its parts. I'm very excited that Scribe will be publishing it.'
The other two shortlisted manuscripts in this year's prize were 'Manly' by Andrew Lindsay and 'The Reflection' by Hugo Wilcken. We received 175 manuscripts in total from writers ranging in age from 35 to 85.
About Amy Espeseth
Amy Espeseth was born in rural Wisconsin and immigrated to Australia in the late 1990s. Her fiction has appeared in various journals including Wet Ink, antithesis, and The Death Mook. She was awarded the Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer in the 2009 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. She is also the recipient of yhe Felix Meyer Scholarship in Literature and the QUT Postgraduate Creative Writing Prize.
