Miles Franklin Literary Award 2017 longlist announced

The longlist for the 2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award has been announced.

The longlisted titles are:

• The Easy Way Out (Steven Amsterdam, Hachette)
• An Isolated Incident (Emily Maguire, Picador)
• The Last Days of Ava Langdon (Mark O’Flynn, UQP)
• Their Brilliant Careers (Ryan O’Neill, Black Inc.)
• A Loving, Faithful Animal (Josephine Rowe, UQP)
• Waiting (Philip Salom, Puncher & Wattmann)
• Where the Trees Were (Inga Simpson, Hachette)
• Hold (Kirsten Tranter, Fourth Estate)
• Extinctions (Josephine Wilson, UWA Publishing).

The longlisted titles were chosen from 64 entries. A shortlist will be announced at the Australian Booksellers Association conference in Melbourne on 18 June. The winning author, who will receive $60,000, will be announced in September.

State Library of NSW Mitchell librarian Richard Neville said on behalf of the judging panel: ‘This year’s longlist, unusually, is nearly all contemporary and urban. The longlist is a reflective one, as novelists grapple with the creation and remembrance of history, the contests of urban relationships, and domestic complexity, trauma, and insight from the proximity of mortality.

‘The diversity of these voices suggests the depth and strength of Australian writing, and its resistance to easy categorisation. Each of these novels brings a distinct voice to the Australian experience which refuses conventional description.’

The judging panel also included Murray Waldren, Lindy Jones, Melinda Harvey and Susan Sheridan.

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, A S Patrić won the 2016 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his novel Black Rock White City (Transit Lounge).

To read Books+Publishing’s guide to the Miles Franklin longlist, click here. For more information, click here.

Category: Local news