The Dame Mary Gilmore Award Honours Young Women of Note
Supporting Young Women Performers chosen from the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts
The Karrakatta Club is honoured to carry forward the legacy of Dame Mary Gilmore, poet and campaigner for the welfare of the disadvantaged.
We have continued since 2013 to offer assistance and opportunity to young women training in Classical Voice at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts. The Award is a $2,000 prize, presented annually and celebrated by a performance for Karrakatta Club members. Professor Leonie Still donated $10,000 to the Fund in 2017 in memory of her mother, a friend of Dame Mary Gilmore. Club members continue to donate generously to support the Award.
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AWARDEES
2024 Bonnie Staude
2023 Emily Davis
2022 Ruth Bourke
2021 Sophie Herbert
2020 Isabella Marslen
2019 Elena Marcello
2017 Ema Gosnell
2015 Katherine Goyder
2013 Corinne Cowling
Gilmore in 1916, by May Moore
Dame Mary Jean Gilmore DBE (1865 – 1962)
Dame Mary (born Mary Jean Cameron) was a prolific writer and poet throughout her life, publishing her last book of poems at the age of 89. Her published letters and some of her poetry books, which reveal her love of nature and country life, and her nationalism, are available to be read in the Edith Cowan Lounge.
Poet, writer, journalist, advocate for women and children, campaigner against injustice and deprivation.
For her services to literature, Mary Gilmore was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire on 1 February 1937. The major themes of her work covered nationalism, the spirit of pioneering, motherhood, women’s rights, history, Aboriginal welfare, treatment of prisoners, health and pensions.
She was a founder-member (1914) of the Sydney Lyceum Club.