Dr Joseph Steinberg completed his BA (Hons) in English and Cultural Studies at UWA in 2016, before going on to an MPhil and a PhD at the University of Cambridge. He is currently researching and writing two books. The first, titled The Program Goes South: Australian Prose and the University, 1970-2020, is the first literary history of the rise of creative writing as a subject in Australian universities. Told through the writings of some of the discipline’s best-known students and teachers, including Tim Winton, Helen Garner, Kim Scott, Gerald Murnane and Thea Astley, this book shows how Australian writing has flourished and diversified over the last fifty years thanks to various forms of institutional support. His second book also explores the question of how best to support the next generation of outstanding Australian writers, but from a different angle. Titled Funding Fictions, this book offers a new history of Australian literary prizes. It begins with the story of how Australia’s foremost literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, was transformed from one woman’s relatively modest bequest into a highly influential cultural institution. Drawing on materials stored in the prize’s archives alongside interviews with judges and recipients, this project tells the story behind the judgments that have made this prize’s name.