Just been told that our nomination of Frontier Incursion for the 2014 Barbara Jefferis Award has been accepted.

The Barbara Jefferis Award is offered for ‘the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society’.

Barbara Jefferis was a feminist, a founding member of the Australian Society of Authors, its first woman President and, in the words of Thomas Keneally, ‘a rare being amongst authors, being both a fine writer but also organisationally gifted. She was a professional and internationally published writer long before most of us dreamed of such things.’

The Award is paid from the Barbara Jefferis Literary Fund, which has been established as a result of a bequest from Barbara Jefferis’s husband, ABC film critic John Hinde, who died in 2006. The Australian Society of Authors is Trustee of the Fund.

In 2014 the Award is valued at $55,000, including a $50,000 prize for the winner. This year’s Award will be assessed by Margaret Barbalet, Georgia Blain and Dorothy Johnston.

Fingers crossed we make the short-listing.