A Pambula author has received a gong for her collection of short stories published in 2021.
Kate Liston-Mills has been highly commended for Dear Ibis, at the ACT Notable Writers Awards ceremony in the small publishers 2021 fiction category held by ACT Writers.
Ms Liston-Mills said she was excited to have been acknowledged for her work.
“Dear Ibis is extremely important to me because it was written during a really important time in my life,” Ms Liston-Mills said.
“I had postnatal depression, the climate crisis was worsening, I was struggling to see myself professionally as a writer at that point in time,” she said.
“To have the book recognised by a group as established and wonderful as ACT Writers means so much to me and it makes all the hard work really feel worthwhile.”
The writer who lives in Pambula said she wrote the book while dealing with bushfires, raising children, and dealing with postnatal depression.
“Dear Ibis is about a lot of things, it’s a collection of short stories, all the stories stand independently but they also have an overarching narrative,” Ms Liston-Mills said.
“The themes that are filtered throughout include fear, loneliness, postnatal depression, growing up and grief but also joy,connection, connection to Country, colonisation, white privilege,” she said.
“It was a very ambitious collection and I’m quite proud of being able to tackle those really huge issues in such a short book.”
Images: Kate Liston-Mills
