Following the announcement of the inaugural Stella Prize, which celebrates great books by Australian women writers, an all-female shortlist has been announced for the 2013 Miles Franklin Award.

The judging panel includes: Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian, State Library of New South Wales; journalist Murray Waldren; Sydney-based bookseller Anna Low; Adjunct Professor Susan Sheridan from Flinders University, Adelaide; and Craig Munro, biographer, book historian, and founding chair of the Queensland Writers Centre.

The winner of the $60 000 prize will be revealed on June 19th 2013.

However, no prize will be awarded this year for the Australian/Vogel's Literary Award. It is the second time that no prize was selected by the judges. A full statement is available from the Allen & Unwin website.

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.

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.

-- Cathy Leutenegger.

QASMT is a long time member of Cyberschools and we are delighted that one of their students has been named Australia's 'neuroscientist of the future'. The country's brightest young minds competed in the finals of the Australian Brain Bee Challenge (ABCC) held at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre earlier this month.

ABBC is an initiative of the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at The University of Queensland (UQ).

Jackson beat seven other Australian finalists and two New Zealanders in a test of brainpower in front of a live audience during a brain-teasing anatomy exam, doctor-patient diagnosis, written test and a neuroscience quiz.
The runner up was Zelda Perri of Presentation College Windsor, in Melbourne.

Presenting the award, Education Minister Martin Dixon said the finalists were of an extremely high calibre.

"All the finalists have demonstrated an extraordinary talent, and I hope the Australian and New Zealand Brain Bee Challenge will inspire them to pursue further study in this vitally important field," he said.

"The community as a whole will be the winners from advances in neuroscience."

The country's only neuroscience competition for high school students, ABBC is a test of knowledge about important facts and concepts concerning intelligence, memory, emotions, sensations, movement, stress, aging, sleep, Alzheimer's disease and stroke, and is designed to inspire students to pursue careers in neuroscience research.

Jackson has earned the right to compete in the International Brain Bee Competition held in Vienna, Austria (TBC) in 2013. He will receive return international airfares, accommodation and spending money for himself and an accompanying adult to attend the prestigious international competition.