Donna Maree Hanson, Author and PhD Candidate

I’m late with this and I don’t have many photos, but what I do have are awesome.

Sydney completed its third wonderful Aurealis Awards. As it was so close to Conflux I wasn’t certain I was going to make it and with one thing and another I didn’t think I could afford it.  Nicole was of the same mind. While we were on a writers’ retreat with Cat Sparks and others, she told Nicole and I we had to come and she even offered accommodation close by for free. That made it doable and of course, we didn’t want to upset Cat.

So like Uncle Jed, we loaded up the car and moved to Sydney for a night. We had Kaaron and Jasmina with us for the road trip. All arranged very last minute but accomplished successfully.

The ceremony was once again at the Edwardian era, Independent Theatre in North Sydney. Venue info here.

We had dinner first at the Thai restaurant next door and we were pretty wowed by the food including braised lamb shank in a coconut curry. (Oops no sidelining to food got it!)

So before the ceremony is a cocktail party, with nice bite sized food and bubbly, wine and beer etc. I was so full I only managed one canape. Oh dear! I managed to squeeze in two glasses of bubbly. This was the time for smoozing and catching up with friends and acquaintances. We got to say hello to Robert Hood, Thoraiya Dyer, Alex Adsett, Amanda Pillar, Cat Sparks, Kaaron Warren and others. (older persons’ memory cells), before being ushered in to the ceremony itself. I didn’t take a photo inside the theatre though it is lovely.

Scott Westerfeld hosted the ceremonies and did a bang up job. He was funny, wooed us about how awesome spec fic genre is and was generally very cool. Margo Lanagan won so many awards, she of course got teased about it. One of them was shared.  The young adult novel with Kaz Delaney.

Here is a link to the press release with the winners.

So then we rock on to the after party. We all mingle outside, grab photos before heading to the bar. My shots come from these. I managed to snag a few winners with their awards.

This is Thoraiya Dyer and Kaaron Warren with their awards. They were giggling a lot. The shot below is them posing a bit better.

They were so happy!

Outside I managed to capture Margo Lanagan.

This amazingly talented author couldn’t carry all her awards. Okay I’m kidding. I’m sure she had them there somewhere.

In the squeeze in the bar I managed to corner, Daniel O’Malley with his award in hand and the Aurealis Awards convenvor, Tehani Wessely.

I was dressed in retro and so was Amanda Pillar (editor!) so we begged someone to take a photo of us. (I had a little red cardigan but dropped it. Lucky Sydney isn’t as cold as Canberra so I didn’t freeze).

Nicole Murphy is the person to watch.

She was having a fab time after all that work co-chairing Conflux with me. It was fun just to hang.  Wasn’t it Nicole?
To tell the truth she could have been minding my glass of champagne.

The party moved on to Rydges North Sydney.

I grabbed a shot of Alex Adsett (agent and in red) and the lovely Kaz Delaney (must buy her book too), who tied with Margo for young adult novel. She told me she is a romance writer. Yay!

I was feeling pretty tired myself, so I parked myself in a chair with Steve Dunbar and then chatted to who came along.

Here is a shot of Kaaron looking happy and replete after her award win. She said it’s the second one but with a big gap between. She won for A-Positive in 1998 and now with Sky in 2013.

And then I took passing shots of people who were at my table. Here is Cat Sparks talking to Steve Dunbar.That’s one of Amanda Pillar talking to Robert Hood. It was late by the time we went home. I was knackered and guilted Nicole into going home earlier than she would have liked. She was having a ball. We arranged to come back to the hotel for breakfast, which gave us a chance to catch up with the people we didn’t catch up with. Highlights for me were Liz Gryzb’s and Kirstyn McDermott’s shoes. Just being there in the buzz and the announcement that Canberra is going to host next year’s Aurealis Awards. That’s right. Conflux Inc, with Nicole Murphy at the head will be hosting the next ceremony sometime in March. Here is a shot of Nicole explaining to the Conflux committee about what her vision and strategy is for the next awards ceremony. You think after Conflux she’d had enough but no, Nicole the dynamo is charging ahead. Me? I’m going to just linger on the sidelines, although I have signed up to judge the graphic novel section of the 2014 awards. Don’t forget to come along to Canberra next year. We know who you are!