HIGHLY acclaimed novelist, short story writer and columnist for The Age, Anson Cameron has won the world’s most lucrative short-story prize, The Best Australian Yarn, a rather fitting feat for the great-great-great grandson of seminal Australian author and bush poet, Joseph Furphy.
Impressing Prize Jury Judge, Robert Drewe for his ‘…rare gem of a short story,’ Cameron’s Vanilla…then cinnamon surpassed a record breaking 6,000 entries to claim the $50,000 Main Prize. Capturing the off-centre, yet longing relationship between a comatose patient and his nurse, Cameron’s award-winning short story expressively conveys how one’s own reality, heightened in this case by extreme need and circumstances, can inform the feeling of love for another.
Born in Shepparton, Victoria, in 1961, Cameron’s regional background is an essential part of his identity as a storyteller. Drawn to the literary worlds created by Australian icons Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, Cameron was blessed with a rich literary up-bringing, filled with stories and poems read to him by his father.
“Reading filled me with such awe when I was young and the worlds within books were where I wanted to live. Not having many contemporaries around like myself, books gifted me with a superpower, a kind of secret intelligence that enabled me to know things about people, what their motivations were, what they’d do in certain situations and how they’d likely react.”
With a body of work, that often reflects a deep sensitivity, encapsulating both the ordinary and extraordinary, Cameron is no stranger to awards and recognition. From Boyhoodlum to Stealing Picasso, which is based on the actual theft of one of Pablo Picasso’s paintings from the National Gallery of Victoria, Cameron has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and has had a short film based on his work.
For those, like me, who were enthralled by Vanilla…then cinnamon, you’ll be pleased to note that Cameron is currently working to complete the novel from which the idea for the award-winning short story was extracted.
