Saturday 1 August the 2015 Australian Young writers $1000 'Basil Sellers Award' will be announced at the annual Press Service International young writer conference in Sydney.
After 25 weeks of markings by a group of five Australian panellists which concluded last Friday 10 July, the points have been sent to statistician John Grocott who is engaged in the tallying process - as this article is published.
The Australian Panellists who spent 25 weeks doing the hard yakka of reading their articles deserve the accolades of the awards program which was initiated in 2013.
2013 Basil Sellers Award – Alison Barkley
2014 Basil Sellers Award – Danielle Stott
2013 Tronson Consistency Award – Laura Veloso
2014 Tronson Consistency Award – Sarah Young
The 2015 Panellists for the Australian Basil Sellers Award and the M & D Tronson Consistency Award -
Aira Chilcott - Canberra
John Skinner - Warwick
Gavin Lawrie - Tweed Heads
Deidre Tronson - Sydney
Natalie Chu - Christian Today
Proclivities
The first thing to note are the number of Cycles in these 25 weeks. Each Cycle consists of 5 weeks. Therefore there have been 5 complete Cycles over these 25 weeks, and it represents 5 articles by each young writer.
What needs to be understood in the first instance, is that the only Australian young writers are in the hunt for these awards who have written five articles. Should any young writer not complete all 5 articles, clearly their points tally will be seriously truncated. There is an old adage that 95% of success is turning up!
Another consideration is what each Panellist proclivities are. Christian Today's Natalie Chu like her predecessor David Chang - point allocations - are solely based on readership statistics. The more readers, the more likely to get higher point allocations.
The other four Panellists range between an emphasis of the message (the heart) while others have priorities of good English, logic, syntax and spelling. One Panellists is a retired barrister, another a retired journalist, another a retired academic and another a retired high school science teacher. Overall there is a great mix of Panellists who collegiately determine the winners.
Who is in the running
What we can affirm is that both the 2013 and 2014 winners – Alison Barkley is serving with an ANG in the Philippines and Danielle Stott has been overwhelmed with other activities and some ill health with hospitalisation.
Moreover under the Press Service International award rules a young writer must be at the annual conference, as anyone who can't be bothered turning up is not rewarded, especially as an air-fare scholarship is offered.
Therefore it is a clean sheet (as it were) for 2015. This presents a breadth of possibilities as some of the Australian young writers have presented remarkable articles on a wide variety of subjects.
The more experienced young writers have shown in the past - they are able to put forward articles that have all the hallmarks of content, logic, English and message. It is not hard to identify such young writers.
Those Australian young writers who have been writing for two years or more:
Queensland's Russell Modlin, Bridget Brenton and Rebecca Moore. NSW young writers David Luschwitz, Christopher Archibald, Sam Gillespie, Sam Manchester, Sam James and Meenal Chandra.
Melbourne young writers with more than two years experience are Laura Veloso, Stephen and Sarah Urmston, Jimmy and Sarah Young, Belinda Croft, while Tasmania's Blaine Packer and Thomas Denevish are also in this range.
There have been many new young writers who have come into the program this year, and we've have noticed that it usually takes a little time to gain the measure of writing a monthly column for an international on-line Christian new provider.
In two weeks we'll discover who the Panellists have determined as the 2015 Australian young writer winners.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He mentors young writers and has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html