Roanna Gonsalves, a noted alumnus of UNSW Sydney, who hails from Goa, India, has won the eminent NSW Premier’s Literary Award 2018 for her collection of short stories. Her debut book, ‘The Permanent Resident (Australia)/Sunita De Souza Goes to Sydney (Speaking Tiger)” has been greatly lauded, and has bagged the Multicultural Award, worth AUD 20,000 at the ceremony.
This award-winning book is a compilation of sixteen intriguing, short, fictional stories that cover an array of subjects around multiculturalism and migration, along with sensitive issues pertaining to the same, from the perspective of a modern outsider. While some make for a light read, most other issues are highlighted through a pragmatic lens and are particularly thought provoking.
Speaking of her enlightening journey and on adding another feather to her cap, Roanna Gonsalves said,
“It is an honor to be recognized by the NSW Government. I look forward to continuing to reimagining what it means to be a world citizen in the 21st century, and to help ensure our literary landscape portrays stories of our multicultural reality.”
Besides the prestigious Premier Literary Award, the book has also been long listed for the Dobbie Literary Award for first time published authors of 2018, and is already on several “must-read books” lists. It has also received academic impetus in the fields of Australian Literature, Postcolonial Literature, and Creative Writing. In fact, following the success of the book, the writing of this Goan wordsmith is being compared to that of stalwarts like Jhumpa Lahiri and Alice Munro.
Gonsalvesis a native of the coastal belt of Goa, andcompleted her PhD from UNSW Sydney in Creative Writing, in the year 2016.Since then, she has been teaching the subject, along with Media studies, besides conducting workshops for several communities across all age-groups. She penned most of the book while studying at UNSW Sydney. She has also garnered several other accolades for her peer-reviewed scholarly work and creative pieces, for several years in India as well as in Australia. Furthermore, she is a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Endeavour Award and is also the co-founder and co-editor of Southern Crossings, an Australian based writers’ collective.