Isobel Dixon receives 2004 Olive Schreiner Prize for Poetry

Press release

	Weather Eye Author: Isobel Dixon Publisher: Quartet Sales and Marketing ISBN: 1874923566 Publishing Date: 2001 Pages: 48 Format: Softcover For a limited time on kalahari.net only R54.72 (normal selling price) R68.40
		Photo by Julian Friedmann

On 12 May 2005 Isobel Dixon will receive the Olive Schreiner Prize for 2004 from the English Academy of South Africa for her poetry collection Weather Eye.

The Olive Schreiner Prize is awarded for new talent and is expressly intended as encouragement for a writer who has produced work of great promise, but cannot yet be regarded as an established novelist, short story writer, poet or playwright. It is awarded for original literary work in English written by a citizen of a Southern African country and published in Southern Africa.

Past winners of the prize include Oswald Mtshali (1974), Kelwyn Sole (1989), Zakes Mda (1996, 1997) and Antjie Krog (2000).

The panel of adjudicators compared Weather Eye to a "well tended garden, pruned to reveal the bare stems in all their pristine, wintry beauty and ugliness" and commended Dixon's "fine and original poetic sensibility" and "remarkable precision of language".

Isobel Dixon was born in Umtata, grew up in Graaff-Reinet in the Karoo, and studied in Stellenbosch. The Patrick and Margaret Flanagan Scholarship enabled her to complete her Masters degrees in English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh and she now works in London as a literary agent, representing, among others, many South African writers. She won the Sanlam Award 2000 for her unpublished collection Weather Eye (subsequently published by Carapace in 2001). In 2004 she won Oxfam's Poems for a Better Future competition.

Her work has appeared in international journals, her poems have been included in many anthologies, and she has also translated Marita van der Vyver's Afrikaans novels Wegkomkans and Griet Kom Weer into English as Breathing Space and Travelling Light (Penguin) respectively.

The Thomas Pringle Awards are for various achievements, with the attention being focused on three different categories every year. The three areas for achievement which will be honoured in 2005 are:

• Play, book, film, radio or television reviews in newspapers and/or periodicals during 2004. (Ideally, a portfolio of work should be submitted.)
• Articles published in 2003 and 2004 on English in education and the teaching of English.
• Poetry in journals published in 2003 or 2004.

The Olive Schreiner Prize is presented to honour new talent. In 2005 it will be awarded for plays of two or more acts which have been published and/or performed in South Africa by a recognised theatre group or company (amateur or professional).

The prizes are sponsored by the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund and administered by the English Academy of Southern Africa.

The English Academy of Southern Africa invites entries for these prizes from editors of journals and newspapers. They are asked to submit the entries to the Academy's Administrative Officer at

PO Box 124
Wits
2050

Each winner receives a cash prize and a certificate.



LitNet: 18 April 2005

Would you like to comment on this book information? Tell us about it. Write to webvoet@litnet.co.za and join our interactive opinion page!
Do you have any book news? Would you like news about specific books or authors? Send your requests or suggestions to sharon@litnet.co.za.

boontoe / to the top

© Kopiereg in die ontwerp en inhoud van hierdie webruimte behoort aan LitNet, uitgesluit die kopiereg in bydraes wat berus by die outeurs wat sodanige bydraes verskaf. LitNet streef na die plasing van oorspronklike materiaal en na die oop en onbeperkte uitruil van idees en menings. Die menings van bydraers tot hierdie werftuiste is dus hul eie en weerspieël nie noodwendig die mening van die redaksie en bestuur van LitNet nie. LitNet kan ongelukkig ook nie waarborg dat hierdie diens ononderbroke of foutloos sal wees nie en gebruikers wat steun op inligting wat hier verskaf word, doen dit op hul eie risiko. Media24, M-Web, Ligitprops 3042 BK en die bestuur en redaksie van LitNet aanvaar derhalwe geen aanspreeklikheid vir enige regstreekse of onregstreekse verlies of skade wat uit sodanige bydraes of die verskaffing van hierdie diens spruit nie. LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf.