SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: Waverley Council is delighted to announce that the first prize money for the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award has been doubled from $20,000 to $40,000 thanks to an ongoing multiyear commitment by the award’s principal sponsors, Sydney philanthropists, Mark and Evette Moran, Co-Founders/Co-CEOs of the Mark Moran Group.
The expansion of the major prize highlights the Nib Award, now in its 22nd year, as one of the most prestigious and valuable literary awards in the country, having distributed more than $500,000 directly to authors including previous winners Tim Low, Helen Garner, Gideon Haigh, Clare Wright and Delia Falconer.
Evette and Mark Moran connected with the Nib Award in 2014 as patrons of the People’s Choice Prize. Picture: Annabel Osborne.
The Nib Award celebrates excellence in research and writing and is presented annually by Waverley Council. Winners are decided by an independent panel of three judges, each of whom brings a wealth of experience from across the literary world. It is judged on high literary merit, quality of research, readability and value to the community and is the only major literary award of its kind in Australia presented by a local government authority.
Mayor of Waverley, Paula Masselos, thanked Mark and Evette Moran and the Mark Moran Group for their commitment to the Nib Award and for helping celebrate and nurture excellence in the arts.
“The Morans’ ongoing support has taken the Nib Award to a whole new level and presented life-changing opportunities for our winning authors,” Mayor Masselos said.
Nominations for the 2023 Nib Award open today, Tuesday 4 April, for written works first published between 1 July 2022 – 30 June 2023.
“The Nib Award continues to highlight extraordinary authors, fascinating stories and fresh ideas, bringing quality literature to Australian readers and inspiring the wealth of creative talent in our community,” Mayor Masselos said.
“The award is a true project of the people, offering some reward for the long, lonely hours writers spend researching their work – most often at their own great expense.”
In the spirit of supporting and encouraging Australian writers, the Council has also increased the People’s Choice Prize to $4000 and will be offering six shortlist prizes of $1,500 each.
“Entries are open to all Australian writers regardless of their experience, chosen subject matter or genre, and so we encourage writers to make a submission either directly or through a publisher,” Mayor Masselos said.
Mark and Evette Moran are co-founders of the award-winning Mark Moran Group, Australia’s most awarded seniors’ provider and international leaders in elder care. They are both highly creative and life-long supporters of the arts.
They first connected with the Nib Award in 2014 as patrons of the People’s Choice Prize. A shared passion for the local community and vision for greater recognition of literature and the Arts more broadly led to the multiyear Principal Sponsorship of the award in 2017, and the name, the Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award.
“Mark and I feel that our writers are often barometers of our times whether capturing our journey to date, the depth of our individual and collective emotions and experiences or helping define a path as to the way forward,” Evette Moran said.
“We are honoured to continue to play a role in the Waverley Council’s Nib Award and their vision of the value it creates in our communities across Australia”.
Established in 2002 as The Nib Waverley Library Award for Literature, the Nib Award has evolved through the support of a range of corporate and community partnerships. Its community partner is Gertrude and Alice Bookshop and Café.
