Applications open today for the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship, which will award $10,000 to an Australian writer to support the writing and research of a new biography.

The Fellowship aims to encourage a high standard of biography writing in Australia and to commemorate the life and writing of Hazel Rowley (1951–2011).

Hazel’s own career received an important boost when a fellowship allowed her travel to the US while researching Richard Wright: Life and Times.

Inaugural recipient Mary Hoban is using her fellowship to travel to Oxford’s Balliol Library and Wellington’s Turnbull Library to research early Tasmanian history.

Applications close 30 November and the successful fellow will be announced in March 2013.

For more information on the Fellowship visit the Writers Victoria website at writersvictoria.org.au.