Category: Australian Literature

Inaugural Stella Prize winner announced

Published: Wed, 2013-04-17 10:10 by Elizabeth Alvey

The inaugural Stella Prize winner was announced last night at an event in Melbourne. Carrie Tiffany won for her second novel, Mateship with birds.

In accepting the award Ms Tiffany paid tribute to key Australian writers:

When I sit down to write I am anchored by all of the books I have read. My sentences would not have been possible without the sentences of Christina Stead, Thea Astley, Elizabeth Jolley, Beverley Farmer, Kate Grenville, Gillian Mears, Helen Garner and the many other fine Australian writers that I have read and continue to read.

In its first year, The Stella Prize aimed to significantly raise the profile of Australian women's writing and awarded a monetary prize of $50,000 to the winner. To find out more about the prize and the awards night, visit T he Stella Prize website. The winning novel, Mateship with birds is currently on display in the Fryer Reading Room.

The long and the short of it: Australian Literary Awards

Published: Tue, 2013-03-26 16:32 by Elizabeth Alvey

Three important lists have been released over the past week in the Australian Literary Awards season.

Ahead of the announcement of the first ever Stella Prize on April 16, the shortlist was announced last Monday. The burial, Questions of travel, The sunlit zone, Like a house on fire, Sea hearts and Mateship with birds are all in contention to win the inaugural prize. As mentioned earlier, the Stella is a brand new literary prize, aimed at raising the profile of Australian women's writing.

The shortlist for the ALS Gold Medal was also released last week. The medal was first awarded to Martin Boyd in 1928. The winner will be announced on 3 July at the ASAL annual conference. The shortlisted titles are:

Darkness on the edge of town by Jessie Cole
Questions of travel by Michelle de Kretser
Montebello by Robert Drewe
Lost voices by Christopher Koch
The fine colour of rust by P. A. O'Reilly

This morning, the 2013 longlist for Australia's leading literary award, the Miles Franklin was announced.

Tom Keneally is nominated for The daughters of Mars and Drusilla Modjeska for The mountain, which she discussed during a Friends of Fryer event last year.

M L Stedman is listed for The light between oceans, which won two prizes, including the Book of the Year Award, at last night's Indie Awards .

Carrie Tiffany's Mateship with birds is cited in both the Stella Prize shortlist and the Miles Franklin longlist, and Questions of travel by Michelle de Kretser in included in all three lists.

You can view all ten longlist titles and learn more about the Miles Franklin Award (and Reading Challenge!) online.

Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship awarded to Stephany Steggall

Published: Thu, 2013-03-07 18:00 by Elizabeth Alvey

The 2013 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship was awarded to Stephany Steggall last night at Adelaide Writers' Week.

Stephany Steggall is a University of Queensland graduate from the School of English, Media Studies and Art History. She completed an Honours degree with a thesis on the poetry of David Rowbotham. This was followed in 2001 by an MPhil in Australian Literature with a thesis on the poetry of John Blight. Much of Stephany's research for this thesis was based on the John Blight manuscript collection in Fryer Library. She was later awarded a PhD from the University of Queensland for a biographical study of Colin Thiele.

In 2004 Stephany published her first book, a biography of Thiele entitled Can I Call You Colin?, and in 2006 her biography of Ivan Southall was published. She received a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts in 2005 to assist with the writing of a biography of Bruce Dawe. Again, Stephany drew on Fryer library's resources in researching this work, making extensive use of the Bruce Dawe manuscript collection. The book, Bruce Dawe: life cycle, was published in 2009. Stephany is pictured here at Fryer Library's launch of this book.

The Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship was established in 2011 to encourage Australian authors to attain a high standard of biography writing and to commemorate the life, ideas and writing of Hazel Rowley (1951-2011).

Stephany will use the $10,000 prize to write a biography of Thomas Keneally, the Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler's Ark.

-- Cathy Leutenegger.

A Brilliant Award

Published: Thu, 2013-02-21 15:42 by Elizabeth Alvey

The inaugural Stella Prize Longlist was released today. The announcement, for the first ever longlist of the best work of literature published in 2012 by an Australian woman, even trended on twitter. The award is named after one of Australia's most important female authors, Stella Maria 'Miles' Franklin.

The Stella Prize will be awarded on April 16, with the winner receiving $50,000 in prize money. The longlist is comprised of: