Last week Jillian Sullivan’s creative non-fiction essay ‘In the Midst of My True Life’ won the non-fiction section of the Elyne Mitchell Writing Awards in Australia. The essay is spliced with her poetry and, true to the award’s theme of writing about Australasian rural life, records life in the Ida Valley and the process of building a new life, handful by handful with straw and earth. Earlier in October her essay ‘Between Lands’ won the Juncture Memoir Contest in America, on the theme The Walls Between Us.

Link to read her essay ‘In the Midst of My True Life’ here

Link to memoir results here

Congratulation from Poetry Shelf!

Jillian Sullivan lives in a small village on a high alpine plateau in New Zealand. Her twelve published books (for adults and young adults) include creative non-fiction, novels, short story collections and poetry. She teaches writing in New Zealand, in Philadelphia for Rosemont College, and in Pennsylvania for the Highlights Foundation. Once the drummer in a woman’s rock band, and now grandmother of eight, her passion is natural building. Her latest book is the memoir A Way Home.