The Stella Prize longlist has been announced, with 12 titles by women and non-binary authors competing for the $60,000 award this year.
Previous Stella winner Alexis Wright and Miles Franklin recipient Melissa Lucashenko have both been longlisted, as well as debut authors including Sansa Rushdi, for her book, written in Bengali (and translated by Arunava Sinha) called Hospital and Hayley Singer for her collection of essays, Abandon Every Hope: Essays for the Dead.
CEO and Executive Director Fiona Sweet said the judges had to read 227 entries to reach the 12 “original, engaging and excellent books for this year’s prize.”
The shortlist will be announced on April 4th, and the winner announced on May 2nd. We take a brief look at all 12 nominated titles:
Graft: Motherhood, Family and a Year on the Land by Maggie MacKellar (published by Penguin Random House)
Writer and historian Maggie MacKellar published her fifth book, Graft, last year. The memoir explores her ideas of motherhood, farming, nature and home. The Tasmania/luruwita-based writer explores the hidden struggles of being a farmer in Australia, including the challenges caused by drought, and the affect of climate change on animal husbandry.
“She does not shy from the viscera of birth and death,” the judges said. “Yet approaches them with the tempered decency of someone who not only knows how to pay attention to the world around her but also cares for it on a deeply personal level. Graft might well be the new benchmark for Australian nature writing.”
Body Friend by Katherine Brabon (published by Ultimo Press)
Katherine Brabon is a celebrated Melbourne-based writer, known for her previous two best-selling titles, The Memory Artist and The Shut Ins. In her third novel, Body Friend, two unlikely women meet in Melbourne and develop an unusual relationship based on their shared experiences of pain.
Judges praised Brabon’s work, calling it “a novel of experiential heft and eloquence, which gives shape to the complexities of chronic pain by giving it human form. It is also a tale of friendship – the deep solace of mutual recognition.”
Feast by Emily O’Grady (published by Allen & Unwin)
In 2018, Brisbane writer Emily O’Grady won the Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award for her debut novel, The Yellow House. In Feast, a family reunite in the Scottish Highlands to uncover truths that threaten to break them apart.
In their report, the judges described the book as one which “reminds us not so much to be wary of unreliable narrators, but of the deep subjectivity of moral value, the unsettling implication that we are – each of us – capable of committing and condoning so much, without ever abandoning our complex humanity and undeniable fragility.”
Hospital by Sanya Rushdi, translated by Arunava Sinha (published by Giramondo Publishing)
Sanya Rushdi’s debut novel follows a young woman who has recently been diagnosed with psychosis. It explores the blurry lines of between sanity and insanity, and questions who gets to make these determinations. Rushdi, who was born in Bangladesh, studied the biological sciences and psychology in Australia, and is currently based in Melbourne.
“Through her spare, honest words, deftly translated from the Bengali by Arunava Singha, Rushdi’s ordeal becomes our own,” the judges wrote. “We descend into psychosis with the narrator, acutely feel her disconnections and institutional indignities. We come to question notions of “illness” and “treatment”. There are no jump scares, just the ineluctable clarity that demands we remain in the moment with something we find deeply uncomfortable.”
She is the Earth by Ali Cobby Eckermann (published by Magabala Books)
Yankunytjatjara poet and artist Ali Cobby Eckermann is one of Australia’s most celebrated and iconic poets. In She is the Earth, the former NSW Premier’s Literary Award winner charts a journey through grief and celebrates the healing power of Country.
“This is work steeped in identity, longing and knowledge,” the judges said. “She is the Earth is a deceptively complex work, despite its minimalism, which pushes at the limits of form and cognisance, to deliver capacious affect.”
Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko (published by University of Queensland Press)
Melissa Lucashenko, a Goorie (Aboriginal) writer of Bundjalung and European heritage, won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2019 for her sixth novel, Too Much Lip. As one of the country’s leading novelists, she has won numerous literary awards, and is also a founding member of human rights organisation Sisters Inside.
Her novel, Edenglassie, is a work of historical fiction, based around Queensland’s colonial history. Judges praised Lucashenko’s seventh novel as one that “centres blak perspectives and experiences in the fight for truth and identity justice, delivered with empathy and authentic characterisation.”
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright (Giramondo Publishing)
Waanyi writer Alexis Wright won the Stella Prize in 2018 for her novel, Tracker. In 2006, she won the Miles Franklin Award for her epic novel Carpentaria. In Praiseworthy, a “crazed visionary” named Cause Man Steel visits a rural town on the brink of ecological catastrophe.
Set in the landscape of the Queensland Gulf Country, judges described the book as “Fierce and gloriously funny.”
“Praiseworthy is a genre-defiant epic of climate catastrophe proportions. Part manifesto, part indictment, Alexis Wright’s real-life frustration at the indignities of the Anthropocene stalk the pages.”
Abandon Every Hope: Essays for the Dead by Hayley Singer (published by Upswell Publishing)
Melbourne writer Hayley Singer has written extensively on subjects including literature and ecologies, queer embodiment and activism. In her debut collection of essays, described as “a deranged encyclopaedia and a diary of anxiety”, Singer explores questions of veganism, animals rights, climate change and violence.
“Experimental and jostling in its use of poetic, lyric, academic and reflective writing styles, this book grapples with the industrial meat complex, from slaughterhouses to cannibalism and beyond,” the judges wrote.
The Hummingbird Effect by Kate Mildenhall (published by Scribner Australia)
Kate Mildenhall’s third novel is a speculative work of fiction that traces the lives of four women across multiple generations. Judges described the book as “inventive, mind-expanding and wonderfully ambitious.”
“Kate Mildenhall tackles the headline issues of our age: labour rights, consumer capitalism, artificial intelligence, fertility and IVF, family violence, lockdown loneliness, aged care and family violence.”
The Swift Dark Tide by Katia Ariel (published by Gazebo Books)
In her part memoir, part love letter book, Ukraine-born author Katia Ariel explores a woman’s desire, marriage and courage. It asks the question: “What happens when, in the middle of a happy heterosexual marriage, a woman falls in love with another woman?”
“In delicate and delicious strokes, Katia Ariel’s The Swift Dark Tide renders the discovery and release of the “hidden self” in middle age,” the judges wrote.
West Girls by Laura Elizabeth Woollett (published by Scribe Publications)
WA-raised, Melbourne-based author Laura Elizabeth Woollett is the author of a short story collection, The Love of a Bad Man (2016), and the novels, Beautiful Revolutionary (2018) and The Newcomer (2021). In her fourth book, West Girls, she explores the challenges of meeting conventional standards of beauty and growing up as a mixed race teenager.
“Darkly funny, this is a formally ambitious and original tale of interconnected female lives – part novel, part story collection,” the judges wrote. “In unflinching prose as sharp as a teenage tongue, Woollett captures the parochial cruelty festering beneath Perth’s mining wealth and cloudless skies.”
The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop (published by Hachette Australia)
In Stephanie Bishop’s fourth book, is a psychological thriller about a mature-aged couple, learning to come to terms with the truth of their marriage. “A sly, meta-fictional think-piece on art-making, art-monsters and the ever-slippery erotics of power,” the judges praised Bishop’s “fully-realised literary achievement”, calling it “a book that is as clever as it is delicious. A masterclass in layered sophistication.”