Australia's Copyright Agency announced its Cultural Fund Create grants yesterday, and I found myself the very honoured, mildly astounded and extremely ecstatic recipient of a grant forf my latest project: a metafictional thriller called Letters From Leo, which was described as "a post-modern cross-cultural thriller that sets up stories within stories, entwining the narratives in a climax that can be read on many levels".
It is the nature of a writer's life that rarely do we have the opportunity to write a book without feeling like we're stealing from our families so that we may do so. Grants like this give artists and writers the opportunity to work without guilt - or at least with less guilt. They hold the world at bay while we create.
It is an amazing and valuable gift and I could not be more grateful.
;)