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Articles on Literary Prizes

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Winners of the 2022 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards: Nicolas Rothwell, Mark Willacy, Sherryl Clark, Andy Jackson, Christine Helliwell and Leanne Hall.

The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards have proved contentious, but this year’s winners are worth celebrating

The winners of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards have been announced. The awards are contentious – but are fought over precisely because of their symbolic and enduring cultural function
The first three winners of the Stella Prize, at the 2015 ceremony. Left to right: Clare Wright (2014, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka), inaugural winner Carrie Tiffany (2013, Mateship with Birds) and Emily Bitto (2015, The Strays). The Stella Prize, Connor Tomas O'Brien

Indigenous voices, #MeToo and disrupting genre: how the tenth Stella longlist reflects its mission of creating change

As conversations about literary representation evolve, so does the Stella Prize. Five of the 12 authors on the tenth Stella Prize longlist are Indigenous, one is non-binary, and genre is in the mix.
What makes a winning book? Women's Prize for Fiction

Why we still need the Women’s Prize for Fiction

This separation or segregation of women’s writing should be understood as part of the patriarchal control of what and who matters – and, historically, women have not.
The Miles Franklin authors with their novels, clockwise from top left: Felicity Castagna, Eva Hornung, Kim Scott, Michelle de Kretser, Catherine McKinnon and Gerald Murnane. Courtesy Perpetual/ Copyright Agency/ Martin Ollman/Timothy Hillier. Eva Hornung image: Noni Martin.

Your guide to the Miles Franklin shortlist: a kaleidoscopic portrait of a diverse nation

For many years, the Miles Franklin award was a bastion of monoculture. But this year’s stories are a diverse reflection of Australia.
A wax model of Ernest Hemingway at Madame Tussauds in New York. Anton_Ivanov/Shutterstock.com

Friday essay: why literary celebrity is a double-edged sword

Bob Dylan is now a literary celebrity. And next week, the Booker Prize judges will anoint another. The tag is still chiefly attached to men but women authors shouldn’t despair: fame and good writing can be uneasy bedfellows.
Dylan is a musician, who has been well recognised in his field. Simon Murphy/Flickr

In honouring Dylan, the Nobel Prize judges have made a category error

Were there really no poets or novelists or essayists - no people who have spent their lives in the field of literature - considered Nobel-worthy? This nostalgic decision is discourteous to writers.
What are the criteria for a Prime Minister intervening in these awards? Literary reasons? Personal reasons? ‘History war’ reasons? Michael Tapp

Why the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards need an urgent overhaul

They should be our pre-eminent national writing prizes. Instead, these awards bob on the vast sea of daily politics, occasionally getting dumped by a breaker.
Is everything written by an Australian automatically “Australian writing”? Mark Wassell/Flickr

True Blue? Crime fiction and Australia

Michael Robotham is the second Australian writer to win the Golden Dagger, but is his book Australian? And does it matter?
Sofie Laguna last night became the fourth woman to win the Miles Franklin award in as many years. Allen&Unwin

Sofie Laguna’s Miles Franklin win helps keep half the world visible

If a society should be judged by the way it treats its children, and those who are struggling on the margins, then Laguna’s work once again proves that the novel is a crucial means for drawing attention to the burning problems of our times.

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