“Tastes like Home” won the 2022 Aurealis Award for Best YA short fiction

I won the Aurealis Award for best young adult short story for Tastes Like Home! So overwhelmed with gratitude.

I first had the idea for this story when I was walking to uni and working a job with weird hours. I drafted the first version of it off to the side at 11pm at my desk. It was the first story I submitted anywhere. My first rejection. It was so harsh I didn’t submit anywhere else for a whole year.

I trunked it at least twice thinking no one else would ever enjoy the story like I did.

But I kept coming back, improving it as I wrote and learned more.

And I thought maybe, despite love of the art, I wasn’t any good.

Thank you for Jessica Nelson-Tyers and the slush team at Andromeda Spaceways for seeing this story and providing the last push it needed to make it truly great. I’m so proud of the final story and that it was published in an Australian magazine (which you can buy here).

Thank you to the Aurealis judges, coordinators and CSFG for running a great event.

Thank you to my tireless early reader bestie who has seen a lot of my early drafts and is somehow still keen to read more.

Thank you the Writer Hangs crew for making me feel less alone and just as valid in my efforts and inspiring me to try harder.

Thank you to my partner who is always up for discussing plot and providing slicing insights, who supports the space and time I need to do this work and does not understand why I am so hellbent on something I often find difficult but encourages me anyway.

And thank you to past me and to everyone else who has a passion project document open behind their real work at whatever hour that is - I see you.