‘Immaculate’ wins 2023 Vogel
Immaculate by Meanjin/Brisbane-based actor and writer Anna McGahan has won this year’s $20,000 Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award, for an unpublished manuscript by an author under the age of 35.
Described by the publisher Allen & Unwin (A&U) as ‘a provocative and tender exploration of loss, identity and healing, and the secret worlds we hide within in order to survive’, Immaculate is the story of a couple trying to navigate their daughter’s potentially fatal illness.
All Frances wants is a cure for her daughter, but that would take a miracle, and miracles aren’t something Frances believes in anymore. Newly divorced from her pastor ex-husband and excommunicated from the church community she once worked within, she wrestles alone with the prognosis of her terminally ill child. Any suggestion of ‘divine intervention’ is salt in the wound of her grief. So when Frances is forced to take in a homeless and pregnant teenage girl who claims to have had an immaculate conception, she’s deeply challenged. But 16-year-old Mary is not who she seems, and soon opens the door to perspectives that profoundly shift Frances’s sense of reality, triggering a chain of astonishing events. It seems that where there is the greatest suffering lies an unexpected magic. Frances begins to hold hope for her family’s future, but the miracle prayed for is not always the one received.
A&U said the novel’s form was ‘a mix of first person narrative from two character perspectives, and fragmented innards of our personal lives–Uber receipts, text messages, police transcripts and Bible passages’, unpacking ‘grief, faith, miracles and suffering through the lens of an adult fairy tale’.
Anna McGahan is the niece of the late author Andrew McGahan, who won the same prize in 1991 for Praise. A television and state actor, she is also the author of the memoir Metanoia and a collection of poetry, Skin. She has written plays, screenplays, and essays for The Griffith Review, The Guardian and other publications, and has chosen to reclaim her identity through fiction after leaving the Christian community, according to the publisher.
A&U will publish Immaculate on Tuesday, 20 June, with booksellers starting to receive stock on Monday, 19 June.
In 2022 the Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award went to A Place Near Eden by Melbourne writer Nell Pierce.
Category: Awards Local news
