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Fremantle author Jay Martin’s memoir takes out the T.A.G. Hungerford award

Jessica NicoFremantle Gazette

A FREMANTLE author’s creative non-fiction piece about life as a diplomat’s wife in Poland has won her the 2016 T.A.G Hungerford Award.

Jay Martin’s manuscript Learning Polish is the first piece of non-fiction to win the award since it began in 1990, beating out fellow finalists Tineke Van der Eecken, David Thomas Henry Wright, Jodie Tesoriero and Catherine Gillard.

Ms Martin said the book combined travel adventures with her journey to find herself and that she hoped it would resonate with other women who had “parked her career and found herself floundering”.

“I wrote Learning Polish because I wanted the world to have the chance to know the amazing, crazy, infuriating country that I came to love that is Poland – where three things are certain: death, taxes, and that shop assistants won’t have change,” she said.

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“That, and the gossip I collected on what really goes on in the inner circles of diplomatic life, was simply too good to waste.”

The award is given biennially to a previously unpublished WA author, with Ms Martin winning $12,000 and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press.

Learning Polish will be published in 2018.