A story about the psychology of drinking and alcoholism has taken out top prize at this year’s Brimbank Writers Awards.
Christine Mackley won first prize in the adult short story category for Not Enough, which charts a woman’s conflicting emotions about drinking in light of her father’s alcoholism.
“Some of it is made up and some is based on real life experiences,” Ms Mackley, 40, said.
“I like exploring relationships between children and their parents, so I really wanted to do that with this story. I also wanted to explore the complexity of the reasons behind why people drink alcohol, and to highlight the fact that things aren’t black and white.
‘‘It was a huge surprise [to win].”
Ms Mackley, who started taking writing seriously three years ago when she joined the Caroline Springs Writers Group, won last year’s Melton short story competition and is
working on a novel which she hopes to complete next year.
Ms Mackley was one of 320 writers who entered the competition, held as part of this year’s Brimbank Readers and Writers Festival.
Other winners included Robert Conlon, Nethmi Vidanagama, Keleyna Amber Nocom, Gina Cerasiotis, Benjamin Trillado and
Himaja Wijesinghe.
Brimbank council chairman John Watson said the annual awards had again highlighted the talents of hundreds of local writers.
Winning entries can be read online at
www.brimbank.vic.gov.au/writersfestival.
Charlene Macaulay
