The ARA Historical Novel Prize

Over the last couple of weeks there has been an announcement of a new prize in the Australian genre writing landscape, and it's a pretty generous one!

Here are some of the details from the Historical Novel Society Australasia website.

The ARA Historical Novel Prize is open to authors who are citizens or residents of Australia or New Zealand. Books published between 1 January 2019 and 30 June 2020 are eligible for entry. Entries may be submitted by authors, publishers or agents. Self-published books are also eligible. Now Australian and New Zealand historical novelists have a chance to be rewarded for excellence in writing, depth of research, and reader appeal.

With the prize being a cool $30000 it's an attractive proposition. I was also glad to see that there are no genre restrictions. As long as the subject of the book is historical then it doesn't matter if it is a kid's book, historical romance, timeslip! Doesn't matter

I am going to be very interested to see what books make the grade for the first award! The inaugural prize will be announced in November.