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The Stella Prize Longlist Has Been Announced

The Stella Prize Longlist Has Been Announced
The Stella Prize Longlist Has Been Announced

This is definitely a literary prize we can get behind. The Stella Prize is one of Australia’s most prestigious literary awards, dedicated to celebrating the talents of female writers. Everyone from established authors to debut talents, writing both fiction and nonfiction, can enter to win a prize of $50,000 (not to mention priceless kudos).

This year’s longlist sums up everything that is truly great about our local literary scene: Big releases by some of our most prolific authors (the creative nonfiction crime story This House Of Grief by Helen Garner has been longlisted, as has Golden Boys, the latest novel from Sonya Hartnett) have been named, as have three debut works: The Strays by Emily Bitto, Heat and Light by Ellen Van Neerven and Foreign Soil, a collection of short stories by Maxine Beneba Clarke.

The Stella Prize Longlist Has Been Announced
The Stella Prize Longlist Has Been Announced

Ceridwen Dovey in marie claire January 2015. Photo: Hugh Stewart

The young adult novel Laurinda, by Melbourne-based essayist and writer Alice Pung has also made the list, as was one of our favourite books of last year, Ceridwen Dovey’s Only The Animals. Dovey, 34, was profiled in our January issue as one of the up-and-coming talents of 2015. The South African-born author received rave reviews from Stasiland and All That I Am author Anna Funder, who described Dovey’s writing as “hypnotic and wonderful”.

The shortlist will be announced on March 12, with a winner awarded April 21. This year’s judging panel includes writer Kerryn Goldsworthy, journalist Caroline Baum, lecturer Tony Birch, singer-songwriter Sarah Blasko and author Melissa Lucashenko.


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