Stella Prize Winner 2025

The winner of the Stella Prize has been announced. Author Michelle de Krester won for her novel Theory and Practice.

Set in Melbourne in 1986, a young woman is researching the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students. She also meets Kit and as they become lovers, her work on Woolf is sidelined. Theory & Practice looks at desire and jealousy, truth and shame.

“Theory & Practice is an exceptional novel of hyper realism in which Michelle de Kretser, an author at the height of her powers, interrogates the messiness of life found in the gap between theory and practice.” - Astrid Edwards Judges' Chair.

Michelle de Krester gave a remarkable acceptance speech, well worth viewing (below), in which she spoke out against the atrocities in Gaza and made an impassioned plea for supporting the Palestinian people. In doing so she highlighted the cost of speaking out, and the willingness of the media, academia and others to equate commentary denouncing the genocide with anti-Semitism. Absolutely brilliant.