Sam Coley has won the 2017 Richell prize for emerging writers for his novel about siblings dealing with grief while road-tripping along New Zealand’s main highway.
Coley’s manuscript, titled State Highway One, stood out among 579 entries to win $10,000 prize money and a year-long mentorship with Hachette Australia.
For the first time in the prize’s history, the judges have also awarded a high commendation and a 12-month mentorship to a second writer from the shortlist of 20, to Michelle Barraclough for her novel As I Am.
The Richell prize was established in 2015 to assist emerging writers of adult fiction and narrative nonfiction and is awarded to unpublished writers of any age. The prize is judged blind, and writers who submit do not need to have finished the manuscript.
Coley’s novel follows twins as they come to terms with grief and confront their past while driving State Highway 1, which runs the length of New Zealand. The novel’s protagonist, who lived in Dubai for many years before returning to New Zealand, struggles to articulate his complex feelings about his home country and his parents’ death to his sister, Amy.
Coley, 32, a full-time law student who also works full-time in a law firm, told Guardian Australia he wrote the novel to explore the idea of home, having been born in New Zealand and living for some years in London before moving to Adelaide in November last year.
“London was home but New Zealand was also home and those two things could be true at the same time and independent of each other,” he said.
The judges, who include Emerging writers’ festival artistic director Izzy Roberts-Orr, author Hannah Richell, bookseller Amelia Lush, and Hachette Australia publisher Robert Watkins, said State Highway One was a “captivating” work.
“The sense of place and the slow breakdown of the lead character’s mental and emotional state made for a gripping read. Sam’s writing feels fresh and modern and is bursting with both heart and humour,” the judges said.
The judges described Barraclough’s highly commended entry as “a love story, an elegy to loss and a deftly crafted narrative about life, love and family ... it was hard to look past Michelle as an emerging writer with great potential”.
Coley said the award will give him the confidence to continue with his writing despite his other commitments.
“Hopefully, when I’m sitting at my desk, when I’ve finished all my reading for law school, and I’m tired and it’s midnight and I want to go to bed and I’ve got a blank piece of paper in front of me and a pen in my hand, that instead of all the self-sabotaging doubtful voices in my head saying, ‘This is rubbish and nobody wants to read it, throw it all in the bin and go and play Nintendo’, I will be able to say, ‘No, not only is this a story that you are desperate to tell ... but it is one that people want to hear. So put the fucking pen on the paper and write it,’” he said.
The Richell prize is presented by Guardian Australia, Hachette Australia and the Emerging writers’ festival in memory of Matt Richell, Hachette Australia’s former CEO, who died suddenly in 2014.
