The 2024 Stella Prize longlist has been released! The annual literary award celebrating women and non-binary writers of both fiction and non-fiction is named after Australian author Stella Miles Franklin.
Past winners include some of my favourite books on recent years:
On 4 March 2024, the longlist was revealed with 12 nominees. I have not read any of the titles, and many of the authors are unknown to me, so I look forward to exploring these books further.
The 2024 longlist is as follows:
Katia Ariel - The Swift Dark Tide
Ariel's memoir explores a period in her life when she unexpectedly falls in love with a woman, despite having a husband and children. The judges write 'It is no mid-life crisis. Rather, it is a mid-life realising of desire and possibility; of queer becoming. Ariel's memoir reads as an unabashed re-telling of meticulous diary entries, kept to provide a constant during her love affair with a woman, a period of welcome change.'
Stephanie Bishop - The Anniversary
A novelist is on a cruise with her husband to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Patrick, once her professor, is much older than her. His success is waning and hers is on the rise and now she is about to eclipse his fame. When a storm hits, Patrick falls overboard and the truth of her marriage begins to unravel. The judges write that this 'is a book as clever as it is delicious'. Bishop is the author of The Singing (2005), The Other Side of the World (2015) and Man Out of Time (2018).
Three women meet while recuperating from operations. Frida swims daily to rebuild her strength. Sylvia prefers to rest to allow her body to heal. The unnamed protagonist attempts each of their forms of convalescence in an attempt to recover from her chronic illness. The judges write that 'this novel of experimental heft and eloquence, which gives shape to the complexities of chronic pain'. Brabon is known for her previous works The Memory Artist and The Shut Ins.
Ali Cobby Eckermann - She Is the Earth
In this verse novel, Eckermann uses 90 short lyric poems to tell her story of her journey and her connection to the Earth. Flora, fauna and the elements feature, grounding the verse. The judges say Eckermann is 'a writer at the height of her powers'. Eckermann is a Yankunytjatjara poet and artist. She won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for her novel Ruby Moonlight in 2013. I love poetry and have seen enough extracts of she is the earth to make me want to read more. Will have to check it out.
Melissa Lucashenko - Edenglassie
Maggie MacKellar - Graft: Motherhood, Family and a Year on the Land
Set on a Merino farm in Tasmania, McKellar writes of her life through the lambing seasons. Spanning a year in which her youngest son is in his last year of high school, ready to leave home, and Maggie prepares herself for a new identity as an empty-nester. The judges write 'it is hard to think of a finer example of writing the cataclysm of drought particular to Australia than this.' Graft is MacKellar's fifth book.
In Melbourne 1933 during the Depression, Lil Martin invites Peggy to board in her home. In 2020 at an aged care home, Hilda is isolated by the pandemic. In 2031 singer La works in a warehouse, and in 2181 Maz is diving or remnants of the past. This novel explores questions of life and death. The judges write 'The Hummingbird Effect is speculative fiction at its finest: inventive, mind-expanding and wonderfully ambitious'. I am a fan of speculative fiction so will add this to my list.
Emily O'Grady - Feast
Alison and Patrick are an eccentric creative couple living an isolated life in Scotland. Neve, Patrick's teenage daughter arrives from Australia to spend a year with her father and stepmother. On her eighteenth birthday, Neve's mother Shannon arrives in Scotland to join in the celebration with a hidden agenda. The judges write 'told from the perspectives of three connected women, Feast reminds us not so much to be wary of unreliable narrators, but of the subjectivity of moral value.' This is O'Grady's debut novel. This book sounds intriguing and brings together some of my favourite things: Scotland, unreliable narrators, and tales of strong women. Add it to the list!
In Melbourne Sanya is diagnosed with her third episode of psychosis. She is taken to a pyschiatric ward where she ponders mental health and institutional treatments. The judges call Hospital 'an unflinching, insightful and delicately wrought work of auto fiction that brings devastating lucidity to the often-opaque realm of mental health.' This is Rushdi's debut novel, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha.
Hayley Singer - Abandon Every Hope: Essays for the Dead
In Singer's first book, she explore how we write the life of the dead. In particular she is drawn to the ethical issue of killing animals for meat, challenging readers to think about what we consume. The judges write 'experimental and jostling in its use of poetic, lyric, academic and reflective writing styles, this book grapples with the industrial meat complex.' As a lifelong vegetarian I am glad someone has written about this, but I don't think this book is for me.
This novel of interconnected short stories explores obsession with beauty. Luna seeks a modelling career, presenting herself as part Asian in an effort to differentiate herself from the other white girls vying for the spotlight. The judges write 'moving from suburban malls to modelling catwalks, empty highways to crowded Instagram feeds, West Girls is as real as it is painful.' Woollett is known for her previous novels Beautiful Revolutionary (2018) and The Newcomer (2021).
Alexis Wright - Praiseworthy
Set in the north of Australia in a small town surrounded by a mysterious haze. The locals try to combat the haze in various ill-fated schemes. A crazed visionary named Chaos Steel steps in with a vision to use 5 million feral donkeys to solve the climate crisis and create a carbon-neutral Aboriginal transport company. His wife and sons have their own plans. The judges write 'a canon-crushing Australian novel for the ages. Fierce and gloriously funny, Praiseworthy is a genre-defiant epic of climate catastrophe proportions'. One of Australia's most lauded authors, Wright is a previous winner of the Stella Prize for her work Tracker (2018).
For more information and the complete judges comments, see the Stella Prize website.
I was disappointed that Charlotte Wood was not longlisted for Stone Yard Devotional and I thought that we might see Madeleine Gray's Green Dot, Sally Colin-James' One Illuminated Thread, Nadine Cohen's Everyone and Everything and Susie Miller's Prima Facie on the longlist. As I have said previously, I wish the Stella Prize would stick with fiction. I am glad that the Women's Prize has recently split into fiction and non-fiction categories, and perhaps in future Stella can do the same.
I am currently reading Edenglassie. I am also intrigued by the works by O'Grady, Mildenhall, Wright and Eckermann. The short time period between announcements of long and shortlists makes it hard to read all these titles before the nominees are whittled down.
The Shortlist will be announced on 4 April 2024 with the winner of the $60,000 prize will be announced on 2 May 2024.