Local author pens a winner

By Lachlan Ellis

A Moorabool author has taken out one of the country’s top writing awards, for her dystopian short story ‘The Surrogate’.

Bacchus Marsh’s Jem Tyley-Miller won the Melbourne Athenaeum Body-in-the-Library Library Award, at the 29th Scarlet Stiletto Awards on Saturday 3 December.

The Scarlet Stiletto Awards is open to female authors only, and has had almost 3000 stories submitted since it began in 1994.

Ms Tyley-Miller took home $1250 along with the Award, and said it was an honour to receive it after years of entries.

“Winning this award has left me on such a high; I’ve been trying to crack this competition for a few years now, and with the Body in the Library Award being the most fought over category, a win feels especially sweet,” she told the Moorabool News.

“The story I entered is actually the second short story I ever wrote. I always loved the idea behind The Surrogate but didn’t have the skills to tell it the way I wanted until recently; learning to write well takes a lot of dedication and time. I must have revised a good 30 times.”

Ms Tyley-Miller’s winning piece is a climate fiction crime story set in a waterlogged Melbourne 100 years in the future, where those who are wealthy inhabit the spaces high above the waterline, and those who are poor endure the wet.

She said her writing was often inspired by her feelings on certain ideas, such as climate change in the case of The Surrogate.

“Throw a crime at an idea and you get to see human beings interact within that given set of circumstances. The end result is always illuminating,” Ms Tyley-Miller said.

“I’ll definitely be holding tight to this win as I embark on a new novel come February.”

Moorabool residents may recognise Ms Tyley-Miller as the co-organiser of the Peter Carey Short Story Award. Her short stories are also published in Meanjin, Overland, Margaret River Press, Scarlett Stiletto – The 14th Cut, and other places.