Novels and collections of short stories including work by Elizabeth Harrower, Charlotte Wood and Amanda Lohrey dominate the long list $50,000 annual Stella Prize which celebrates great books, fiction and non-fiction, by female Australian authors. The only non-fiction book to make the list is Small Acts of Disappearance : Essays on Hunger by Fiona Wright. The full long list is:
It’s half way through 2015 and time for a literary stock take of my year so far. The bare statistics underpinning six months of reading pleasure are: total number of books – 55 books consisting of 50 novels, three works of non-fiction, one book of poetry and one play. The gender breakdown was 33 women writers and 22 male, drawn from 13 countries, with the largest number coming from Australia and Great Britain. Below are my ten favourite books (so far), not in any particular order as just selecting the ten was hard enough. One of Us by Asne Seirstad, Waiting for the Past by Les Murray and The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna deserve a special mention because they would have been on the list if the Top 10 was actually a Top13.
Full list:
Sofie Laguna has won Australia’s $60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award for her book The Eye of the Sheep (Allen & Unwin) about a young boy trying to cope as his family implodes under the pressures of alcoholism and domestic violence. She beat other shortlisted writers Sonya Hartnett’s for Golden Boys, (Penguin Books Australia), Christine…
Women writers dominate the short list for the Miles Franklin, one of Australia’s most prestigious awards which was announced tonight. Only one man, Craig Sherborne, who wrote Tree Palace, made it through. The short list for the $60,000 prize which celebrates “Australian life in all its glories” is:
The judges’ spokesman, Richard Neville, said the shortlisted novels had “a rich cast of unforgettable characters, and themes ranging from childhood
Joan London (right) wanted to write about the 1950s, “the time of her childhood.” Emily Biffo
wanted to write about a group of people attempting to separate themselves from mainstream culture. And Elen Van Neervan wanted to ask questions about Indigenous governance in Australia, and issues like land rights, identity and love. Each of the six finalists for the Stella Prize for Fiction, the winner of which will be announced next week, has explained the inspiration behind their shortlisted books in a series of revealing interviews with The Guardian.
Maxine Beneba Clark whose collection of short stories Foreign Soil is published by
Hachette, said she was looking at “people trying to find a place for themselves in the world – about the search for a true place to call home, about the things we gain when we migrate, and the all-consuming heartache of our leaving, even as we find the very things we’re looking for”.
Eight women have made the long list for the long list of the Miles Franklin Award for $60,000 prize for Australian Literature won last year by Evie Wyld’s evocative All the Birds, Singing. The shortlist will be announced on 18 May with the eventual winner named on 23 June. The…
Journalist and author Christine Keneally is the only non-fiction author to make it onto the shortlist of Australia’s prestigious The Stella Prize for women writers announced today. Her The Invisible History of the Human Race looks at the role of DNA in shaping us, and our world.
The other five finalists are:
In announcing the shortlist, Stella Prize executive director Aviva Tuffield said: “These six remarkable books explore themes of identity, family, displacement and belonging, with distinctly Australian resonances.’’ The winner will be announced on Tuesday 21 April. Previous recipients of the prize are Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship with Birds (2013) and Clare Wright for The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (2014).
Below is the Stella Award’s synopsis of each of the finalists.