Miles Franklin 2014 shortlist announced

The shortlist for this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award has been announced.

The shortlisted titles are:

• The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Richard Flanagan, Vintage)
• The Night Guest (Fiona McFarlane, Hamish Hamilton)
• My Beautiful Enemy (Cory Taylor, Text)
• Eyrie (Tim Winton, Hamish Hamilton)
• The Swan Book (Alexis Wright, Giramondo)
• All the Birds, Singing (Evie Wyld, Vintage).

The winner of the $60,000 prize will be announced on 26 June.

The shortlist includes two past winners, Tim Winton (Breath, Dirt Music, Cloudstreet, Shallows) and Alexis Wright (Carpentaria), and one debut novelist, Fiona McFarlane.

The judging panel comprises State Library of NSW Mitchell librarian Richard Neville; journalist and columnist for the Australian Murray Waldren; Sydney-based bookseller Anna Low; biographer, book historian, publishing editor and Queensland Writers Centre founding chair Craig Munro; and emeritus professor Susan Sheridan.

On behalf of the judging panel, Neville said: ‘All the novels on our shortlist explore fascinating and varied facets of Australian life and experience from prisoner of war camps and a sinister windswept island to a seedy highrise apartment block and a future dystopia where Swan Lake becomes a polluted pond in a high energy narrative unlike anything ever heard before in Australian literature.’

Last year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award was presented to Michelle de Kretser for Questions of Travel (A&U). To view this year’s longlist, click here. For more information on the award, click here.