Janet Rickwood Award, 2026
The Janet Rickwood Writing Encouragement Award honours Janet Rickwood (1936-2025), an English teacher and educational leader who touched the lives of many ACT students and teachers.
At first, this appears to be a conventional story of a reporter, Joey Evison, covering a probable crime in a remote country town. The gunshots alert the reader that all is not as it seems while the characters Joey encounters indicate that a cover up is occurring. The dialogue is sparse yet thoroughly convincing as Joey’s questions are shut down and each interaction challenges his perception and beliefs. The ending is credible yet disconcerting to the reader as Joey seems to bury his conclusions in his car’s glovebox. Overall, this is well executed piece with the writer showing great potential as a writer in the crime fiction genre and a worthy winner of the Janet Rickwood writing encouragement award.
Remembering Janet
As a teacher committed to excellence in the teaching of English, Janet was active in the leadership of ACTATE from when it was founded in 1974. She served in many roles, including as president, and was ACTATE’s first life member. She also served as the public officer for ACTATE and for the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE) for over 40 years.
Janet is remembered as an expert English teacher and workshop presenter at local and national conferences, as the English consultant, establishing the Canberra Literacy Program in the 1980s, as a principal, and as a mentor of teacher education students at the University of Canberra. Teachers still refer to her 1989 AATE publication, When It’s Fun You Learn.
Janet was an avid reader and she enjoyed reading student writing as a LitLinks judge until 2024. Her legacy lives on in the classrooms, communities and hearts of the students and teachers she inspired.