Seja Awarded Grant McLennan Memorial Fellowship

Seja Vogel was awarded the 2013 Grant McLennan Memorial Fellowship in a ceremony at the State Library Of Queensland last night, the solo artist and occasional Regurgitator member beating out a strong contingent of fellow Brisbane artists to collect the $25,000 prize.

The prize is awarded to an artist or songwriting group every year, with the money to be used for travel to broaden the horizons and hopefully inspire the creativity of the winning songwriter. Seja has chosen to use her money to fund a trip to New York City, which she will undertake in the early part of next year.

Also shortlisted for the prize in 2013 was Edward Guglielmino – who won the Song of the Fellowship prize for his song Mary – Jeremy Neale and Little Scout songwriters Patrick Elliot and Melissa Tickle. The ceremony featured performances from each of these artists as well as a performance from last year's winners Laneway.

Each of the nominees professed a genuine mutual respect with their counterparts and this all came to a head at the end of the evening when all artists took to the stage to perform a shambolic but uplifting rendition of the classic 1987 Go-Betweens song Bye Bye Pride.

Seja released her second LP All Our Wires earlier this year. You can read our review of it here, and our interview with her here.

Read The Music Brisbane's tweets from the night.