Viviane Gerardu Award, 2024
The Viviane Gerardu Writing Encouragement Award commemorates Viviane Gerardu, a member of the ACTATE community who passed away in 2020. The award honours her contribution to the teaching of English in the ACT and her championing of young writers.
2024 Viviane Gerardu Award Winner
Oneiric Deicide by Nicholas Markham, Amaroo School
Click here to read Oneiric Deicide
by Nicholas Markham
The unique title Oneiric Deicide (Oneiric relating to dreams and Deicide the killing of a god), hints at a challenging story to follow. The author creatively uses the human life cycle to structure the story arc. The decision to narrate using the second person point of view is courageous while the deeply poetic prose was arresting.
This and the exploration of mature and sophisticated themes of a philosophical and existential nature, including free will and reasons for human suffering, justify bestowing the 2024 Viviane Gerardu Writing Encouragement Award on this student-author to continue to develop their writing potential.
Remembering Viviane
Viviane Gerardu was an inspirational teacher who made a difference in the lives of her students and her colleagues.
Viviane presented regularly at ACTATE professional learning events and at national conferences. Teachers always left her workshops with practical strategies and interesting resources to use with their students. She developed the Language for Understanding Across the Curriculum (LUAC) resources and presented workshops to ACT teachers from all learning areas. She has also been published widely through books such as the English Quest series and articles in ACTATE’s journal, Activate.