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USC lecturer nominated for prestigious award
29 September, 2004
The 2004 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards will be announced tonight and Sunshine Coast local, Steven Lang, is nominated for the Best Unpublished Manuscript of an Emerging Queensland Author for his novel An Accidental Terrorist.
Mr Lang, who lives in Maleny and works with his wife at Rosetta Books, has been a Lecturer and Tutor in Creative Writing at the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) for the past five years.
Mr Lang has been writing for many years and has written several short stories, a play and a film script, but An Accidental Terrorist is his first novel.
Three and a half years in the making, the novel is set in the early '80s at the back of Eden on the far south coast of New South Wales.
The main character, Kelvin, becomes involved with a group of people who have moved to the wilderness to save the forest from wood chipping and build their own homes.
Kelvin, along with others, schemes to sabotage the wood chipping machinery but he soon discovers not everyone is who they seem to be which leads to trouble.
The Queensland Premier's Literary Awards are Australia's richest and most prestigious and Mr Lang is in the running for $20,000 in prize money if his work is deemed the best at tonight's ceremony.
But it is not the prize money that is most important to him.
"The reward will be in people reading my work," Mr Lang said.
"Writing is a very solitary activity and I've spent years in a room by myself writing this."
"And after all that work, the real prize will be in people reading the novel."
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing Gary Crew, himself no stranger to literary award nominations, said Mr Lang's nomination was a boost for the University.
"The people who lecture and tutor our creative writing students have very strong writing skills and industry experience," Mr Crew said.
"Steven's nomination recognises the quality of this work and to be nominated for his first novel is excellent."
The winners will be announced this evening as part of the opening of the Brisbane Writers Festival at the Queensland Art Gallery.
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