I went to Melbourne for the Deborah Cass award night and to catch up with friends.  The Deborah Cass award is open to anyone who was born overseas or has at least one parent born overseas —so that’s a large chunk of the population who qualify for entry.  Karina Ko was the winner of this year’s prize, I was runner-up and Su-May Tan was second runner-up. The judges couldn’t make it but the winner and runner-up of the inaugural prize Moreno Giovonnoni and Melanie Cheng were there. Melanie was very generous and shared her experiences as an emerging/emerged writer. She’s also a super nice person and gave Marianna (one of the shortlisted…