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One of the nation’s leading media personalities, Andrew Denton, today launched a new $25,000 fellowship named in honour of his late father.

The inaugural Kit Denton Fellowship, presented by the Australian Writers’ Foundation, was launched at the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington with special guest, acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Stephen Sewell.

An initiative of the Australian Writers’ Foundation (AWF), the charitable arm of the Australian Writer’s Guild (AWG), the Fellowship is to reward courage and excellence in performance writing and allow a writer to develop a project over the coming year.

Kit Denton was a respected and admired member of the writing community; a lifetime member of the Australian Writers’ Guild, a scriptwriter, author, poet and lyricist. His most famous work was The Breaker, an international best selling novel about the trial and execution of Breaker Morant. After a life of courage, creativity and achievement Kit died in 1997.

“Kit was a writer’s writer, always drinking in the work of others,” Andrew Denton said. “He constantly made himself available to those who sought guidance. He was unfailingly professional, a man of commitment and integrity and never afraid to speak the truth as he saw it.”

Perhaps this is best illustrated by the sequel to The Breaker. A decade after its release he published A Closed File, a non-fiction work to tell the truth on information he received in the intervening years.

“The fact that Closed File was, in some ways, an admission by Kit that his original work was ‘top dressed with dramatic license’, his words, did not bother him,” Mr. Denton added. “Kit was interested in the truth even if it was at his own expense.”

When approached by AWF President, Geoffrey Atherden, about the Fellowship, Denton suggested the criteria be simple: the writer’s work must demonstrate courage.

“A writer can display courage in many ways: by independence of thought; by expressing a deeply unpopular view; by persevering in the face of limited resources; or by refusing to baulk at seemingly insurmountable obstacles.”

“With an increasing concentration of media ownership coinciding with a rise in fundamentalist thinking, the need for genuine free-thinkers, those unafraid to question and challenge the status quo, is greater than ever,” Mr. Denton said.

“Hopefully the Kit Denton Scholarship will be rattling cages for many years to come.”

“In presenting the Kit Denton Fellowship the AWF is demonstrating their commitment to increasing opportunities for satisfying and rewarding work, and to encouraging and promoting the excellence of Australian performance writers,” said AWF President, Geoffrey Atherden.

Applications for the Fellowship close 5.00pm Friday July 6 and will be presented at the 40th Annual AWGIE Awards in Sydney on August 31.

For details on how to apply go to www.awg.com.au