Wright wins 2024 Stella Prize for ‘Praiseworthy’

Alexis Wright has won the $60,000 Stella Prize for her fourth novel, Praiseworthy (Giramondo).

Wright becomes the first author to win the Stella Prize twice, having previously won the 2018 prize for Tracker (Giramondo).

Stella Prize judges Beejay Silcox (chair), Eleanor Jackson, Cheryl Leavy, Bram Presser and Yves Rees were unanimous in their decisions regarding this year’s winner.

‘Fierce and gloriously funny, Praiseworthy is a genre-defiant epic of climate catastrophe proportions,’ said the judges in their report. ‘Part manifesto, part indictment, Alexis Wright’s real-life frustration at the indignities of the Anthropocene stalk the pages of this, her fourth novel.

‘That frustration is embodied by a methane-like haze over the once-tidy town of Praiseworthy. The haze catalyses the quest of protagonist Cause Man Steel. His search for a platinum donkey, muse for a donkey transport business, is part of a farcical get-rich-quick scheme to capitalise on the new era of heat. Cause seeks deliverance for himself and his people to the blue-sky country of economic freedom.’

The judges said Praiseworthy ‘walks the same Country as companion novel, Carpentaria, published in 2006, and here, Wright demonstrates further mastery of form’.

‘Reflecting the landscape of the Queensland Gulf Country where the tale unfolds, Wright’s voice is operatic in intensity,’ said the judges. ‘Wright’s use of language and imagery is poetic and expansive, creating an immersive blak multiverse. Readers will be buoyed by Praiseworthy’s aesthetic and technical quality, and winded by the tempestuous pace of Wright’s political satire. Praiseworthy belies its elegy-like form to stand firm in the author’s Waanyi worldview and remind us that this is not the end times for that or any Country. Instead, it asks, which way, my people? Which way is humanity?’

A proud member of the Waanyi Nation, Wright has won numerous awards, including the 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award for Carpentaria. At the 2023 Queensland Literary Awards, Praiseworthy won in the fiction category and was shortlisted for the Award for a Work of State Significance. The book has been shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Last year Wright was awarded the Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, which ‘acknowledges the achievements of eminent literary writers over the age of 60 who have made an outstanding and lifelong contribution to Australian literature’.

In accepting the 2024 Stella Prize, Wright said: ‘I was inspired to write Praiseworthy after asking some hard questions about climate change, and the concerns I have about the survival of our ancient culture. I was concerned to explore what unabated global warming will mean for increasing numbers of poor people in the world. What will it mean for many Aboriginal people who are already living through unprecedented times on a daily basis, as they have done for well over two centuries without much relief, nor respect for their sovereign rights.

‘How do we survive an uncertain future? In Praiseworthy, I looked at the reality of our circumstances and what it would mean to face the challenge of living on a burning planet and carrying our culture and ancient wisdom into the future. I wanted to capture this spirit of the times at home and across the world and for a work of literature that was not just about ourselves, but that was also capable of capturing the beauty and joy of all things, the big and the small.’

Praiseworthy was chosen as winner of the Stella Prize from a shortlist of six and a longlist of twelve. Each of the authors with shortlisted titles receives $4000 in prize money and those with longlisted titles receive $1000.

Said Stella CEO Fiona Sweet: ‘The quality of this year’s books has been extraordinary. The twelve longlisted and six shortlisted books for the 2024 Stella Prize have earned a well-deserved place in the history of Australian literature. Today we celebrate these twelve books and announce the winner of the 2024 Stella Prize, Alexis Wright, for Praiseworthy, a genre-bending, canon-breaking novel that has been described by international media as the most ambitious and accomplished Australian novel of this century.’

Praiseworthy was published by And Other Stories in the UK and New Directions in the US.

Last year’s winner of the Stella Prize was Sarah Holland-Batt for The Jaguar (UQP).

More information about this year’s winner and shortlist is available from the Stella website.

Picture credit: Darren James.

Category: Awards Local news