MEDIA RELEASE

Maria Quinn’s The Gene Thieves wins the inaugural Norma K. Hemming Award

HarperCollinsPublishers are delighted to congratulate the late Maria Quinn on winning the inaugural Norma K. Hemming Award for excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, class and sexuality in speculative fiction.

The Norma K Hemming is awarded by the Australian Science Fiction Foundation (ASFF) and was launched this September at Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention. The Award will not necessarily be given annually, with the judging panel having reserved the right to only make a winning selection if there is a work that meets an appropriate standard of excellence.

Maria Quinn was born in 1942 and sadly died of leukemia on 2 June, 2010. After working in the US and Canada, she moved to a London agency as Creative Director. Returning to Australia, she became a magazine editor and feature writer. Her television credits include producing the national program King’s Kitchen. She won the 2007 Todhunter Literary Award for short story and was the recipient of a prestigious Varuna fellowship. The Gene Thieves was her first novel.

The Reading Stack reviewed The Gene Thieves in March 2009 with a comment from Maria Quinn. It is a great loss to the reading public!