Author wins $60,000 prize
SOUTH Gippsland author and illustrator Alison Lester has won a $60,000 prize for her remarkable contribution to literature.
Ms Lester, who has a shop and gallery at Fish Creek, was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature 2018 and is the first children’s author to win it.
The award recognises a Victorian author whose body of published work has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature, and to cultural and intellectual life.
Ms Lester’s career has spanned more than 30 years and 40 books, delighting generations of children in Australia and worldwide.
She is an ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, the Melbourne Royal Children’s Hospital’s Education Institute and the Clean Ocean Foundation. In 2012 she became Australia’s first Children’s Laureate.
Among her works noted by the Melbourne prize were The Quicksand Pony, Magic Beach, Imagine and Are We There Yet?
“I’ve been making picture books for nearly 40 years and have worked with many wonderful people along the way,” Ms Lester said.
“I’d like to thank my fellow authors and illustrators, editors, designers, publicists, booksellers, teachers, parents and children for your support and friendship and for making work always seem like play.”
She praised John Cooper for overseeing her Fish Creek shop, paid tribute to her publishers and thanked her family.
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