Dr Ann-Marie Priest -- a Senior Research Officer in the CQU Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development Centre -- has been awarded a prestigious national literature prize for her essay about the pleasures of reading.

“Reading is a very deep form of intimacy... it’s almost like being in love,” explained Dr Priest, a researcher at CQU.

Acclaimed Australian writer Frank Moorhouse presented Dr Priest with the $10,000 prize on 30 March during an awards ceremony in Surfers Paradise.

“People think of reading as a solitary activity because often it’s about being really alone, reading by yourself. I wanted to explain in my essay (titled “Toward an Erotics of Reading”) that reading is actually a very intimate and profound form of communion with an author or a character,” Dr Priest said.

Moorhouse, who judged the entries along with novelist and academic Amanda Lohrey and creative non-fiction writer Donna Lee Brien, said the judges were unanimous in their decision.

“It has given me confidence that people might be interested in what I have to say. When I read my essay out at the awards ceremony, several people came up to me and told me they had always felt the same way about reading,” added Dr Priest, who has worked as a lecturer on literature and professional writing at CQU.

Writing the essay provided Dr Priest a chance to work on “something less academic,” she said.

The prize, offered by the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Foundation for the Arts and administered by Griffith University\\\'s School of Arts, is awarded annually for a short piece of writing in a specified genre. In 2004, the specified genre was non-fiction.

Her prize-winning essay will be published in a future issue of the Griffith Review.

Dr Priest previously worked in the Division of Teaching and Learning Services at CQU for ten years.