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Stella Prize 2016 shortlist announced

10 March 2016   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

The shortlist for the 2016 Stella Prize has been announced.

The shortlisted titles are:

  • Six Bedrooms (Tegan Bennett Daylight, Vintage)
  • Hope Farm (Peggy Frew, Scribe)
  • A Few Days in the Country: And Other Stories (Elizabeth Harrower, Text)
  • The World Without Us (Mireille Juchau, Bloomsbury)
  • The Natural Way of Things (Charlotte Wood, A&U)
  • Small Acts of Disappearance: Essays on Hunger (Fiona Wright, Giramondo).

The six shortlisted titles were chosen from a longlist of 12 by a judging panel that includes author and academic Brenda Walker, writers Emily Maguire and Alice Pung, literary critic and author Geordie Williamson, and bookseller and Indigenous Literacy Foundation founder Suzy Wilson.

Chair of judges Walker said it was a ‘vibrant year’ for Australian women’s writing: ‘The books on the 2016 Stella Prize shortlist are all exceptionally strong, finely composed and compassionate literary investigations of the fate of individuals interacting with the natural world and with social authority; with protection and self-protection in complicated environments; with the hard-won joy of living.’

The winner of the $50,000 prize will be announced in Sydney on 19 April. The shortlisted authors will each receive $2000 as a result of a donation from the Nelson Meers Foundation.

For the first time this year, the shortlisted authors will also be awarded a three-week ‘Stella Grass Trees Writing Retreat’ in coastal Victoria, supported by the Trawalla Foundation.

Trawalla Foundation director Carol Schwartz said the organisation was ‘proud to support’ the Stella writing retreats and offer the finalists the opportunity to work on new and ongoing projects. ‘Virginia Woolf’s words about women needing “a room of one’s own” still ring true, and we trust that the residency will nurture these six writers’ creativity,’ said Schwartz.

The Stella Prize is presented for the best work of fiction or nonfiction by an Australian woman published in the previous calendar year. The prize is named after Miles Franklin, whose first name was Stella.

For more information about the prize and the shortlisted titles, visit the Stella Prize website here.

 

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