InReview InReview

SA QLD
Support independent journalism

Books & Poetry

New author scoops $50,000 Stella Prize

Books & Poetry

Comments
Comments Print article

Debut novelist Emily Bitto has won the 2015 Stella Prize for a book the judges described as “intellectually engaging and emotionally gripping”.

The Strays, published by Affirm Press, is set in 1930s conservative Australia and revolves around Lily, a young girl who becomes infatuated with the wild family of avant-garde painter Evan Trentham.

The Strays is about families, art, isolation, class, childhood, friendship, and the power of the past,” says Stella Prize judging panel chair Kerryn Goldsworthy.

“In its subject matter, its characters and its sombre mood, this novel is reminiscent of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Sybille Bedford’s Jigsaw or AS Byatt’s The Children’s Book, and in this company it can hold its head high.”

The Stella Prize is open to works of fiction and non-fiction by Australian women and was introduced two years ago to redress a perceived gender imbalance in other major literary prizes such as the Miles Franklin.

The winner receives $50,000, while $2000 goes to the authors of each of this year’s shortlisted books: Foreign Soil, by Maxine Beneba Clarke; The Invisible History of the Human Race, Christine Kenneally; The Eye of the Sheep, Sofie Laguna; The Golden Age, Joan London, and Heat and Light, Ellen van Neerven.

Melbourne-based Bitto said in a statement that she believes the Stella Prize has had a huge impact on the Australian literary landscape, initiating “a vital dialogue about gender within the public domain”.

“The Stella Prize is an award I feel very passionate about, and I am particularly honoured to have won a prize that has grown from a motive so dear to my own heart: the desire to redress gender inequality in the literary world.

“And to be recognised alongside such an astonishingly talented long- and shortlist, including writers I revere as a reader, is the greatest honour.”

Previous winners of the prize have been Carrie Tiffany, for Mateship with Birds, and Clare Wright, for The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka.

Make a comment View comment guidelines

Support local arts journalism

Your support will help us continue the important work of InReview in publishing free professional journalism that celebrates, interrogates and amplifies arts and culture in South Australia.

Donate Here

Comments

Show comments Hide comments
Will my comment be published? Read the guidelines.

. You are free to republish the text and graphics contained in this article online and in print, on the condition that you follow our republishing guidelines.

You must attribute the author and note prominently that the article was originally published by InReview.  You must also inlude a link to InReview. Please note that images are not generally included in this creative commons licence as in most cases we are not the copyright owner. However, if the image has an InReview photographer credit or is marked as “supplied”, you are free to republish it with the appropriate credits.

We recommend you set the canonical link of this content to https://inreview.com.au/inreview/books-and-poetry/2015/04/22/new-author-scoops-50000-stella-prize/ to insure that your SEO is not penalised.

Copied to Clipboard

More Books & Poetry stories

Loading next article