Best Australian Yarn: Rebecca Higgie’s The Pyrocene wins Readers’ Choice Award

A striking love story set against the backdrop of a dangerous fire season has been voted the readers’ favourite in The Best Australian Yarn short story competition. Rebecca Higgie’s The Pyrocene won the $2000 Readers’ Choice Award after subscribers to The West Australian cast their votes. The WA author was overwhelmed to hear the result and said she was grateful to everyone who had voted. “I consider this a gift,” she said. “It is overwhelming to hear my story has resonated with readers.” The Pyrocene was also named in the competition’s top 10 stories at an awards ceremony in November. The two lovers in Higgie’s story, Negus and Elizabeth, were developed from the stirrings of her second novel, which she is currently writing. Her first novel, The History of Mischief, won the inaugural Fogarty Literary Award for young WA writers. Higgie recalled visiting her grandmother in Nedlands recently and seeing smoke rising from Kings Park after a series of fires were lit in the area. “I am very concerned how Australia will be altered by climate change in the future, particularly by fire,” she said. The Readers’ Choice Award is the final prize in the competition’s record-breaking second season. Nearly 40 judges worked over many months to read the 5500 entries submitted and determine the prize winners. Tasmanian author Jacqueline MacDonald took the $50,000 first prize with her story Split Life.