This week, author Charlotte Wood won the Australian Stella Prize for literature for her novel The Natural Way of Things. “Exposing the threads of misogyny, cowardice and abuses of power embedded in contemporary society, this is a confronting, sometimes deeply painful novel to read. With an unflinching eye and audacious imagination, Charlotte Wood carries us from a nightmare of helplessness and despair to a fantasy of revenge and reckoning,” Chair of the Judges panel, Brenda Walker said. In a gracious acceptance speech, an edited text of which appears below, Wood cast a vivid shaft of light on the on-going emotional (as well as financial) struggle many authors face and her five reasons to write.