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Stella Prize 2015 longlist announced

Thursday, 12 February 2015   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

The longlist for the third Stella Prize has been announced.

This year’s longlisted titles are:

  • Foreign Soil (Maxine Beneba Clarke, Hachette)
  • The Strays (Emily Bitto, Affirm Press)
  • Only the Animals (Ceridwen Dovey, Penguin)
  • This House of Grief (Helen Garner, Text)
  • Golden Boys (Sonya Hartnett, Penguin)
  • The Invisible History of the Human Race (Christine Kenneally, Black Inc.)
  • The Eye of the Sheep (Sofie Laguna, A&U)
  • The Golden Age (Joan London, Random House)
  • Laurinda (Alice Pung, Black Inc.)
  • Nest (Inga Simpson, Hachette)
  • Heat and Light (Ellen van Neerven, UQP)
  • In My Mother’s Hands (Biff Ward, A&U).

 

The shortlist for this year’s prize will be announced on 12 March, ahead of the announcement of the winner in Melbourne on 21 April. The winner of this year’s prize will receive a cash prize of $50,000.

This year’s prize is judged by critic and writer Kerryn Goldsworthy (chair), journalist and broadcaster Caroline Baum, writer and lecturer Tony Birch, singer-songwriter Sarah Blasko, and author Melissa Lucashenko.

Goldsworthy said in a statement that the longlist reveals the ‘wealth of talent and skill across a broad spectrum of authors, genres and styles in Australian women’s writing’. ‘Of the twelve writers whose work appears on the longlist for 2015, almost half a century separates the youngest from the oldest,’ said Goldsworthy. ‘Some of these writers have just published their first books, while others are experienced veterans of the Australian literary scene. The list includes science writing, short stories, reportage, novels, memoir, and fiction for young adults.’

The Stella Prize is presented for the best work of fiction or nonfiction by an Australian women published in the previous calendar year. The prize is named after Miles Franklin, whose first name was Stella, and was inspired by the UK Women’s Prize for Fiction, previously known as the Orange Prize for Fiction.

The inaugural Stella Prize, presented in 2013, was awarded to Carrie Tiffany for Mateship with Birds (Picador). Clare Wright won the 2014 Stella Prize for The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (Text). For more information about the Stella Prize, visit the website here.

 

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