While the Miles Franklin Award was said to award ‘a novel of the highest literary merit of Australian life’, it was often considered a ‘boys club’.
This is despite the award being founded by author and feminist Stella Maria Sarah ‘Miles’ Franklin (My Brilliant Career). Hence, the creation of the publicly-funded Stella Prize in 2012 – it is now established as a major annual literary award celebrating the work of outstanding Australian women writers.
2022 Stella Shortlist Announced
Following the Stella Prize shortlist announcements for 2022, the library has put together a list of some of the winning and shortlisted titles available in the library for you to enjoy. All of the books are a brilliant testament to the diverse writing talent of Australian women writers.
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2021
Winner
The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld
In 1720s Scotland, a priest and his son get lost in the forest, transporting a witch to the coast to stop her from being killed by the village. Centuries later, Viv is cataloguing the valuables left in her dead grandmother’s seaside home, when she uncovers long-held secrets of the great house.
2020
The shortlist
There Was Still Love by Favel Parret,
The Yield by Tara June Winch
The Weekend by Charlotte Wood
2019
Winner
The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie
When Vicki Laveau-Harvie's elderly mother is hospitalised unexpectedly, Vicki and her sister travel to their parents' isolated ranch home in Alberta, Canada, to help their father. They are horrified by what they discover on their arrival.
The shortlist
Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko
The Bridge by Enza Gandolfo
2018
Winner
Tracker by Alexis Wright
A collective memoir of the charismatic Aboriginal leader, political thinker and entrepreneur Tracker Tilmouth. Taken from his family as a child and brought up in a mission on Croker Island, Tracker was a visionary, a strategist and a projector of ideas, renowned for his irreverent humour and his determination to tell things the way he saw them. in contemporary Aboriginal life as it is to the legacy of an extraordinary man.
The shortlist
The Life To Come by Michelle de Kretser
An Uncertain Grace by Krissy Kneen
2017
Winner
The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
A reimagining of Marina Abramovic’s performance of ‘The Artist is Present’, in which she silently encountered individual members of a larger audience of viewers while seated in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The shortlist
An Isolated Incident by Emily Maguire
The Hate Race by Maxine Clarke
Between A Wolf and A Dog by Georgia Blain
Dying by Cory Taylor
2016
Winner
The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood
Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down property in the middle of a desert. Strangers to each other, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be there with eight other girlsThey pray for rescue - but when the food starts running out it becomes clear that the jailers have also become the jailed. The girls can only rescue themselves
The shortlist
Hope Farm by Peggy Frew
A Few Days in the Country by Elizabeth Harrower
2015
The shortlist
The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna
Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke
The Golden Age by Joan London
The Invisible History of the Human Race by Christine Kenneally
2014
Winner
The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright
The Eureka Stockade is one of Australia’s foundation legends, but until now it has been told as though only half the participants were there. As Clare Wright reveals, there were thousands of women on the goldfields and many of them were active in pivotal roles.. But it is in the rebellion itself that the unbiddable women of Ballarat come into their own.
The shortlist
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
Night Games by Anna Krien
The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane
The Swan Book by Alexis Wright
2013
Winner
Mateship With Birds by Carrie tiffany
Hard-working Betty has escaped to the country with her two fatherless children. Betty is pleased that her son, Michael, wants to spend time with the gentle farmer next door. But when Harry decides to teach Michael about the opposite sex, perilous boundaries are crossed.
The shortlist
The Burial by Courtney Collins
Questions of Travel by Michelle De Kretser
Like a House On Fire by Cate Kennedy
Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan