Queensland writers rewarded with literary fellowships Fellowship winning authors (from left) Angela Slatter, Patrick Holland and Kristina Olsson. THREE Queensland writers have won $15,000 fellowships in a State Government initiative that replaces funding for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. Premier Campbell Newman axed the $230,000 awards last year as a cost cutting measure but the government announced in March it would instead provide a $62,000 program to develop homegrown writing. Nearly 50 Queensland writers applied for the fellowships but the first to benefit from the inaugural scheme are Brisbane authors Patrick Holland, Kristina Olsson and Angela Slatter. All three are award-winning novelists. The fellowships were announced on Wednesday (July 10) by Arts Minister Ian Walker and Queensland Literary Awards chair Dr Stuart Glover. The QLA is a grassroots prize program that grew from the outcry over the axing of the Premier's literary awards. It is now the largest suite of privately-run literary prizes in the country. Mr Walker said he hoped the fellowships would support the winners to continue creating new work. "Queensland has a great writing tradition and awarding these Fellowships will help this carry on by supporting three authors to develop new books and projects," he said. I congratulate Patrick Holland, Kristina Olsson and Angela Slatter on becoming the inaugural Fellows and look forward to the results of their projects. The QLA was charged with judging all fellowship entries and selecting the winners. "The standard of the applicants was very high, demonstrating the important contribution literature is making in Queensland," Dr Glover said. All applicants were required to propose a project they would work on if they won a fellowship. The fellowships gives authors financial breathing space to pursue their craft and contribute to Queensland's literary future. "They give us the very valuable gift of being able to buy the most valuable thing a writer can get - time," Slatter says. Slatter, the only Australian to have won the prestigious British Fantasy Award, proposed a mosaic novel which uses fairytale elements. Holland grew up in outback Queensland and is working on a novel about the final days of mythical Queensland bushranger James Kenniff. Olsson, who just released her mother's memoir Boy, Lost, is developing a non-fiction book that traces a vacant block of land in Brisbane through modern times to European settlement, Indigenous occupation, and back even further to the ice age.