Media Release

Post Graduate Creative Writing student career on the rise

27 April 2007

Elisabeth Holdsworth, MCA-R Writing candidate with the School of Journalism & Creative Writing has won the inaugural Calibre Prize.

This prestigious writing award worth $10,000 was launched in 2006 by Australian Book Review (ABR) and is open to all Australian writers to submit non-fiction essays in English between 3,000 and 10,000 words. Elisabeth Holdsworth was announced as the 2007 winner of the annual prize late last year. Her essay was published in full and featured on the cover of the February issue of ABR.

After a protracted judging period of four months, the winning essay titled ‘An die Nachgeborenen: For Those Who Came After’ was selected from a distinguished field of 120 entries which included submissions from leading writers and commentators as well as previously unpublished essayists. Described as “stirring” and “luminous” by the judges, the 10,000 word essay relates to the Elisabeth’s recent return to her birthplace of Middleburg and her family’s experiences during World War II.

Elisabeth Holdsworth (de Rijke - Nassau) was born in the Netherlands and came to Australia as a twelve year old. She has worked for the Australian government mainly in overseas postings and has previously been published in Best Australian Essays of 2004, Southerly, The Monthly, Ginninnderra Press, Island.

Elisabeth has recently made her debut as a reviewer for ABR in the April issue (now available) with her thoughts on Ian Buruma’s, “Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance” and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s “Infidel”. She is currently recording ‘An die Nachgeborenen: For Those Who Came After’ for the ABC, which will be broadcast within the Bookshow segment called “First Person”. The reading will be aired on ABC over 5 episodes later this year and will precede a new recital of “The Diary of Anne Frank”. It will also be produced on CD.

Elisabeth says “My area of research, apart from the creative work, has to do with memoir, memorialising, fictionalising of family history and the untruths that develop over time. My father's family has been part of the fabric of Dutch life for a thousand years. Plenty of scope there to commit all sins associated with memoir!”

Copies of the February issue of ABR are still available through:
Australian Book Review
Unit 6, 193A Lennox Street
PO Box 2320
Richmond South VIC 3121

Details of current issues and 2008 Calibre Prize:
http://www.australianbookreview.com.au/

Extract:
“My father’s family was part of the fabric of Middleburg and Zeeland since the thirteenth century. Their fortune rose as the Dutch East India Company prospered, and fell when that tune stopped playing. When Father was born in 1910, the family was still one of the wealthiest in Zeeland. My mother was also born in 1910, to a poor Jewish family in a sequestered community in an impoverished part of Zeeland called Zeeuws Vlaanderen – Flanders. Her parents and most members of their community were illiterate.

In 1910 both families shared the riches of children, the certain knowledge of continuity. I was the only child born to either family after the war. I am the last survivor of both families. I don’t have children, so it all ends with me. But not just yet.”

from ‘An die Nachgeborenen: For Those Who Came After’ by Elisabeth Holdsworth
Winner of the Inaugural Calibre Prize, ABR, 2007

Images courtesy of Australian Book Review:
Cover ABR February 2007 No.288
The author’s mother
(original images from the author’s collection)