‘Our box met with a bit of a red wine incident …’ Joanne wrote close to midnight yesterday and sent the picture above. I don’t know details of the ‘incident’ – yet! – but I just love it that this was my confirmation of our incredible win last night at the HSS Awards! I was interviewing Tan Twan Eng (what a pleasure that had been!) earlier in the day and had a prior evening commitment, so I could not fly up for the awards ceremony, but Joanne was there to represent us. It was ‘like the Oscars’, according to her, and WE WON!

It is such a joy that we were recognised with the HSS Award for Best Fiction Edited Volume for our Short.Sharp.Stories anthology, FLUID: The Freedom to Be. I have the photograph, but it is still difficult to grasp that this wonderful thing happened to us. And it happened at the same time when Dawn Garisch won the HSS Award for Best Fiction Short Stories for her collection, What Remains. And Frankie Murrey won the HSS Award for Best Emerging Author in the Fiction Category for her debut, Everyone Dies. The stories we tell and nourish and publish are spreading their wings and doing remarkable things!

Wow. Just wow!