Morag Fraser AM Steps Down

From 2006 Morag Fraser was chair of the Board of Montsalvat, Australia’s oldest continuing artists’ community. After 12 years of exemplary work she stepped down at the Montsalvat Board AGM on 9th November 2018.

Her other achievements are many and varied. She graduated with honours from Melbourne University and took her MA and Diploma in Education from La Trobe University. Her career encompasses writing, teaching, journalism, publishing, literary judging, reviewing, music performance and the dramatic arts.

Her journalism spans 50 years and includes editing Melbourne University’s Farrago, Eureka Street magazine and contributing features, opinion pieces and arts reviews to most of Australia’s metropolitan newspapers and many of its journals and magazines. She was Adjunct Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, 2003-2009.

She has been chair of Australian Book Review, a member of the Victorian Law Foundation board, and chair of the John Button Prize judging panel. She was for seven years one of the judges of the Miles Franklin Literary award and from 2009 to 2011 she judged of the Mildura Festival’s Philip Hodgins Memorial Prize. She was a member of the advisory board of the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, 1999–2007 and chair of the Melbourne Writers Festival for three years.

In 2004 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia, for services to journalism.

The Montsalvat community is indebted to her for her steady, diligent, kind and insightful leadership. Her fine arts sensibilities have helped shape our vibrant programs while her sensitive care of our buildings and grounds has created the foundations to take Montsalvat safely into the future.