2016               
Griffith Review Queensland Writing Fellowship for ‘Killing Bold’ published in Griffith Review, no. 57. GR nominated this essay for a 2017 Walkley Award for excellence in journalism 

2016               
Australasian Association of Writing Programs postgraduate creative writing prize for ‘Coolooloi’. Judges were impressed by essay’s ‘fascinating combination of interview, personal experience and reflection on inter-species interaction on Fraser Island’ and its ‘fresh and excitingly critical approach to the interview as a collaborative form’

2015–2017     
Research Training Program/Australian Postgraduate Award to complete Doctorate of Creative Arts at UTS 

2015
UTS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Fund to conduct fieldwork and interviews on K’gari/Fraser Island

2015               
UTS Vice-Chancellor’s Postgraduate Research Student Conference Fund to present at the AASA Animal Publics: Emotions, Empathy, Activism conference, awarded April

2002–2003     
Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship. Awarded biennially by the Australian Publishers Association, the Literature Board of the Australia Council and Australian publishing companies.

The fellowship enabled Rowena to spend 12 weeks in New York City interviewing publishers, editors, agents, writers, literary scouts and marketing staff, and working in-house with Jane Starr literary scout, St Martin’s Press and Hyperion Books to investigate how books that think about history through the prism of personality are positioned in the market

2001               
NSW Premier's General History Award for Fighting Spirit of East Timor: the life of Martinho da Costa Lopes.