tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/stella-prize-10077/articlesStella Prize – The Conversation2023-04-27T09:46:39Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2043852023-04-27T09:46:39Z2023-04-27T09:46:39ZSarah Holland-Batt wins the 2023 Stella Prize with a powerful look at death and ageing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523106/original/file-20230427-20-2212o2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C5168%2C3453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sarah Holland-Batt </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mindy Gill/The Stella Prize</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Acclaimed poet Sarah Holland-Batt has won the 2023 Stella Prize for her powerful and elegiac collection of poetry, <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/the-jaguar">The Jaguar</a>. </p>
<p>Poetry was excluded from the Stella Prize until 2022. In only the second year of its inclusion, poetry has made its presence known: Holland-Batt is the second poet in a row to win the prize, after last year’s was won by Evelyn Araluen’s collection, <a href="https://theconversation.com/first-nations-poet-evelyn-araluen-wins-the-2022-stella-prize-with-a-wild-ride-skewering-colonial-mythologies-182120">Dropbear</a>. </p>
<p>And poetry seems to be more widely on the ascendant in Australia: in January, it was announced that from 2025, Australia will have a <a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-is-to-have-a-poet-laureate-how-will-the-first-appointment-define-us-as-a-nation-198769">national Poet Laureate</a>. Holland-Batt read a poem from The Jaguar at the announcement. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-is-to-have-a-poet-laureate-how-will-the-first-appointment-define-us-as-a-nation-198769">Australia is to have a poet laureate – how will the first appointment define us as a nation?</a>
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<h2>The full power of poetic language</h2>
<p>The Jaguar is Holland-Batt’s third collection of poetry, and the $60,000 Stella Prize joins a string of previous accolades – most notably the 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for her 2015 collection <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/the-hazards">The Hazards</a>.</p>
<p>The Jaguar brings the full power of poetic language to bear on experiences often pushed to the edges of public life. The most stunning poems in the collection focus on the experience of ageing, illness and death – in ways that are both deeply compassionate and fierce. </p>
<p>Stella Prize chair Alice Pung says of the book:</p>
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<p>In The Jaguar, Sarah Holland-Batt writes about death as tenderly as we’ve ever read about birth. She focuses on the pedestrian details of hospitals and aged care facilities, enabling us to see these institutions as distinct universes teeming with life and love. </p>
<p>Her imagery is unexpected and unforgettable, and often blended with humour. This is a book that cuts through to the core of what it means to descend into frailty, old age, and death. It unflinchingly observes the complex emotions of caring for loved ones, contending with our own mortality and above all – continuing to live.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/first-nations-poet-evelyn-araluen-wins-the-2022-stella-prize-with-a-wild-ride-skewering-colonial-mythologies-182120">First Nations poet Evelyn Araluen wins the 2022 Stella Prize with a 'wild ride' skewering colonial mythologies</a>
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<h2>The politics of bearing witness</h2>
<p>Stella’s winning books have tended to have an activist dimension – and The Jaguar is no exception. In paying such careful attention to the long decline and death of Holland-Batt’s father from <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-causes-parkinsons-disease-what-we-know-dont-know-and-suspect-57579">Parkinson’s Disease</a>, this collection can be considered an extension of her advocacy about human rights abuses in aged care in Australia. </p>
<p>Holland-Batt has spoken publicly about the neglect of aged care funding and policy in this country. She made <a href="https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2020-06/WIT.0330.0001.0001.pdf">a submission</a> to the <a href="https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au/">Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety</a> about the abuse and neglect her father suffered in aged care.</p>
<p>“Because we vehemently resist thinking about ageing and death, talking about these subjects openly is difficult or even taboo,” she wrote <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/the-powerful-lesson-i-learned-watching-my-father-die-20220627-p5awzk.html">in the Sydney Morning Herald</a> last year. “Our cultural denial of death also underwrites many of our failures in aged care.”</p>
<p>The politics of this collection reside in the act of bearing witness. In these poems, the mundane world of the hospital and nursing home takes on a glowing life, with the natural world interleaving and sometimes crashing into the cloistered worlds of illness and death in hospital waiting rooms and corridors. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Jaguar is an extension of Sarah Holland-Batt’s advocacy about human rights abuses in aged care.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The brilliant opening poem envisions the speaker’s father as a giant koi, “guiding the mottled zeppelin / of his body in a single unceasing turn”, surfacing when the nurses bring his dinner. </p>
<p>In another poem, the speaker’s mother is in hospital, listening to David Attenborough, and the ward and the world of his documentary become entangled: “Buzzers / zip and sting like electric / whipbirds.” These poems are moving and surprising, full of inventiveness and sound play.</p>
<p>There are some vertiginous tonal shifts across this collection. Readers are taken from hospital elegies to a world of champagne, travel and sex. These shifts can be discomforting because much of the collection, including its first section, uses a traditionally lyric voice: an “I” which in this case can easily be aligned with the experiences and perspective of the poet herself. </p>
<p>This makes the poems easy for the reader to get a handle on and to understand what is at stake in them. When the reader gets to poems that take on a more satirical or playful tone, such as “Affidavit”, the speaking “I” is much less stable: the reader needs to work harder to understand what is going on.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-complain-about-aged-care-and-get-the-result-you-want-180036">How to complain about aged care and get the result you want</a>
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<h2>Imaginative flight</h2>
<p>A good example of these shifts is in the ways the jaguar of the collection’s title emerges throughout the collection. The hyperbolic “Ode to Cartier”, which reanimates images of jewellery advertising to unsettling life, reads: “let me die in peace / with the silk of a jaguar’s breath / huffing in my ear at dawn.” </p>
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<p>Elsewhere we see a father raise a cup of jaguar’s blood on an impossible trip to Brazil. Another jaguar is given as a pet by a drug dealer to his daughter. And finally, the titular poem in which the Jaguar transmogrifies from imagined animal to actual car, “a folly he bought without test-driving, / vintage 1980 XJ, a rebellion against his tremor.” </p>
<p>This “bottle green” jaguar exemplifies the grief and rage and lost possibilities embodied in a diagnosis like Parkinson’s. It is driven, dangerously and against doctor’s orders, then tinkered with until finally “it sat like a carcass / in the garage, like a headstone, like a coffin – / but it’s no symbol or metaphor. I can’t make anything of it.”</p>
<p>The jaguar of this poem also demonstrates Holland-Batt’s imaginative and linguistic power: it is at once an object of this world and a link to other understandings of the relationship between the human and the animal, especially at death. </p>
<p>With a combination of ruthlessness and tenderness, clear-eyed witness and imaginative flight, this is a poet who knows exactly what she is doing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204385/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julieanne Lamond receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She has undertaken research, with Melinda Harvey, for the Stella Count. </span></em></p>Sarah Holland-Batt becomes the second poet in a row to win The Stella Prize. The Jaguar is an extension of her activism against human rights abuses in aged care in Australia.Julieanne Lamond, Senior Lecturer in English, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2029582023-04-26T13:01:28Z2023-04-26T13:01:28ZStella Prize shortlist 2023: your guide to 6 gripping, courageous books<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522540/original/file-20230424-28-jb0iol.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3994%2C1988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Stella Prize</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Stella Prize has shown that feminist activism in the literary sector can work. At its outset, in 2013, it drew attention to the lack of women on prize shortlists.</p>
<p>Over time, it appears to have shifted prize culture in this county to the point that it seems unlikely that we’ll see a “sausagefest” shortlist again any time soon. And Stella’s regular <a href="https://theconversation.com/something-remarkable-has-happened-to-australias-book-pages-gender-equality-has-become-the-norm-177362">count</a> of gender in Australian book reviewing has ensured editors think about the gender of the authors they review and the writers who review them. </p>
<p>Prizes can also be responsible for more subtle shifts in literary culture. The Stella Prize has challenged implicit, ingrained ideas about what a prize-winning book should look like. Its shortlists have foregrounded books that are idiosyncratic, activist and challenging. This year’s shortlist is no exception, for the most part steering away from established authors and major presses.</p>
<p>Taken together, the books on this year’s Stella shortlist suggest something about the forms of courage at work in Australian women’s writing at the moment: the courage to continue culture in the wake of colonial violence, to take political and personal risks in writing about a repressive regime, to write in the face of death and grief, stigma and taboo. </p>
<p>There is also courage in representing women who manifestly do not “keep it together” in their roles as mothers, partners, and friends, or who “let themselves go” in terms of not maintaining the forms of bodily or emotional control society expects of them. To read these works is to be gripped and compelled: they will stay with you.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/something-remarkable-has-happened-to-australias-book-pages-gender-equality-has-become-the-norm-177362">Something remarkable has happened to Australia's book pages: gender equality has become the norm</a>
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<h2>We Come With This Place by Debra Dank</h2>
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<p>What strikes me most about <a href="https://www.echopublishing.com.au/books/we-come-with-this-place">this multi-generational memoir</a> is its generosity. Here, Debra Dank pulls the reader close and shares stories not only about her childhood, but also her ancestors and her children. Many voices are present here, but the reader is guided by the warmth and humour of the narrating voice, and by the vivid details about place and culture it provides. </p>
<p>This is a story of family, connection and Country, thriving despite the trauma inflicted by racist violence. Its segments each recount an aspect of Dank’s life story as it intertwines with Gudanji/Wakaja Country and history; incidents from her life share space with stories of her parents, grandparents and then her children. </p>
<p>Many of these stories are concrete moments of memory that do not look away from a violent history, but which are determinedly focused on community and continuance. I emerged from this book grateful to Dank for being willing to share it with us as readers.</p>
<h2>big beautiful female theory by Eloise Grills</h2>
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<p>This is a work of memoir, theory, art history and visual essay, in which Eloise Grills tackles the big question of how women are impacted by how their bodies are seen by others. A series of essays illustrated by Grills’ arresting artwork, invite us to think about the fat body in culture, and how it feels to grow up and be seen as a fat woman.</p>
<p>The effect is frank and visceral: this combination of forms and media enables Grills to speak in multiple, conflicted ways about how women’s senses of their bodies are so intensely felt and yet socially circumscribed. She does not shy away from critique – her art and words share the page with quotes by cultural critics and theorists thinking about the effect misogyny has on women’s bodily experience – but there is also celebration and community here, especially in her tributes to an unsung history of “fat lady painters”. </p>
<p>This work also does some big thinking about the complicated history of women’s confessional writing and art, and how the act of confession is now shaped and monetised by social media.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/big-beautiful-females-and-familiar-dystopias-new-graphic-nonfiction-interrogates-21st-century-life-182224">Big beautiful females and familiar dystopias: new graphic nonfiction interrogates 21st-century life</a>
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<h2>The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt</h2>
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<p>Sarah Holland-Batt is the most established author on this year’s shortlist. <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/the-jaguar">The Jaguar</a>, her third book, is a powerful collection of poetry. Its strongest poems turn to scenes most people would turn away from: her father’s slow death from Parkinson’s, complete with hospital visits, dementia, grief. </p>
<p>In these poems, the devastating, mundane world of the hospital and nursing home takes on a glowing life: the brilliant opening poem envisions the speaker’s father as a giant koi, “guiding the mottled zeppelin / of his body in a single unceasing turn”, surfacing when the nurses bring his dinner. In another, the speaker’s mother is in hospital, listening to David Attenborough, and the ward and the world of his documentary become entangled: “Buzzers / zip and sting like electric / whipbirds.” </p>
<p>There are some dramatic tonal shifts across this collection, from these stunning hospital poems to others about travel, love and sex. Throughout, Holland-Batt uses form and language purposefully, with the deftness and confidence of a poet who knows exactly what she is doing.</p>
<h2>Hydra by Adriane Howell</h2>
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<p>This debut novel is a taut and page-turning account of a woman who manifestly does not “keep it together”. Anja finds herself separated from her husband and her cherished career as a specialist in mid-century modern furniture, living in an isolated house in the middle of a navy base. </p>
<p>In this evocatively spooky place she falls in thrall to a mysterious creature that may or may not be an urban myth. She is a woman who does not do what her work or her friends or her partner expect of her, but she’s no misfit hero: she’s a hot mess. </p>
<p>I love this novel’s attention to the world of work and its expectations, and the complexities of female friendship. Objects take on talismanic emotional qualities and become, in their own ways, drivers of its plot. <a href="https://transitlounge.com.au/shop/hydra/">Hydra</a> is a new take on the gothic representation of a place with a layered history. It is detailed, memorable and difficult to put down.</p>
<h2>Indelible City by Louisa Lim</h2>
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<p>Louisa Lim uses a combination of memoir, biography and historical research to tell a layered story about Hong Kong’s history and present. It is at once a story of her own experiences of growing up in Hong Kong, a historical account of Hong Kong’s complex colonial history and the story of a street artist and garbage collector, Tsang Tsou-choi, who calls himself the King of Kowloon. </p>
<p>His sense of disinheritance, and his determination to paint wonky calligraphy all over the city that is painted over, but also sold in art galleries, is used by Lim to think about the city’s past and its heartbreaking recent history <a href="https://theconversation.com/beijing-is-moving-to-stamp-out-the-hong-kong-protests-but-it-may-have-already-lost-the-city-for-good-121815">of protest</a> and suppression. It is also used to think about Lim’s own position as a journalist and woman who grew up in Hong Kong. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/indelible-city-dispossession-and-defiance-in-hong-kong">Indelible City</a> ends up eschewing the possibility of journalistic detachment in the face of seeing a vibrant city become subject to an authoritarian regime. Lim decides to pick up the paintbrush herself, and tells a story that is unashamedly activist. The result is an account that is both painstakingly researched and gripping to read.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/louisa-lims-outstanding-portrait-of-a-dispossessed-defiant-hong-kong-is-the-activist-journalism-we-need-179091">Louisa Lim's 'outstanding' portrait of a dispossessed, defiant Hong Kong is the activist journalism we need</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Bad Art Mother by Edwina Preston</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522286/original/file-20230421-21-tsdob0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522286/original/file-20230421-21-tsdob0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522286/original/file-20230421-21-tsdob0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522286/original/file-20230421-21-tsdob0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522286/original/file-20230421-21-tsdob0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522286/original/file-20230421-21-tsdob0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522286/original/file-20230421-21-tsdob0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522286/original/file-20230421-21-tsdob0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The figure of Veda Gray, the mother of <a href="https://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=1781">this novel</a>’s title, draws from many female artists across history who have produced art in the face of a social structure that makes it very difficult to do so. </p>
<p>Aspects of her story echo that of Australian poet <a href="https://theconversation.com/gwen-harwood-was-one-of-australias-finest-poets-she-was-also-one-of-the-most-subversive-183637">Gwen Harwood</a>, who found it impossible to get her poetry published under her own name, but remarkably easy under a male pseudonym. In her anger, Harwood published a sonnet that said, when read acrostically: FUCK ALL EDITORS. Veda undertakes a similar protest, but with devastating personal impact. </p>
<p>Like Harwood, Veda writes poetry about aspects of women’s daily lives in housework and caregiving that are considered unworthy of poetry by male gatekeepers. Veda is unruly, in disarray, a “bad mother” who makes a difficult bargain with a rich couple to share care of her son. She is joined in an evocatively detailed world of restaurants and art in 1960s Melbourne by a cast of other women artists whose brilliance finds varied paths to light. </p>
<p>Preston uses Veda, and the narrating figure of her son Owen, to think about the choices women have to make – now as in the past – between their own creative achievement and what society expects of them as mothers and wives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202958/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julieanne Lamond receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She has undertaken research, with Melinda Harvey, for the Stella Count. </span></em></p>The 6 books on this year’s Stella Prize shortlist – including poetry, memoir, fiction and reportage – are idiosyncratic, activist and compelling.Julieanne Lamond, Senior Lecturer in English, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1954252022-12-04T19:01:20Z2022-12-04T19:01:20ZHeather Rose writes with raw beauty about trauma and ‘hardcore spiritual work’ – so why does it leave me cold?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497904/original/file-20221129-12-dfo64q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">dreamcatcher desert frankie k QHBEEOpjCDQ unsplash</span> </figcaption></figure><p>I have to begin my review of acclaimed novelist Heather Rose’s first foray into non-fiction with an admission: I am a deeply unspiritual person. I find “spiritual journey” narratives, generally speaking, solipsistic and tedious: I even grew impatient reading Herman Hesse’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52036.Siddhartha">Siddhartha</a>. </p>
<p>This skepticism, atheism, irreligiosity — call it what you will — inevitably colours my reading of Rose’s memoir, which is an account of childhood trauma and adult pain overcome, or at least processed, through what I can only describe as hardcore spiritual work.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here – Heather Rose (Allen & Unwin)</em></p>
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<h2>Looking for something</h2>
<p>The existential moment that presages Rose’s spiritual journey occurs early in her childhood in still-pastoral 1960s Hobart. Six years old, she finds herself gazing towards the sky above a eucalyptus tree in the school playground, making her own personal monastic vow. </p>
<p>“Hello,” she says to the sky. “I’m ready. Tell me what to do. Make use of me.” There’s both a questing and an offering of service in this. Rose is looking for something: spirit, meaning, transcendence — herself.</p>
<p>It’s appropriate that this occurs for Rose beneath the harbouring branches of a giant eucalypt and not the crossbeams of a church ceiling. Nature is central to her spiritual voyage, as well as to her philosophical commitments — her wonder at Tasmania’s beauty and wilderness begins in childhood and finds its apotheosis in political action she spearheads many decades later, to rid Tasmanian arts festivals of Forestry Tasmania funding. </p>
<p>There are echoes of Janet Frame’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/an-angel-at-my-table-9780143791065">An Angel at My Table</a> and Alice Munro’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14285.Lives_of_Girls_and_Women">Lives of Girls and Women</a> in the opening chapters of <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Heather-Rose-Nothing-Bad-Ever-Happens-Here-9781761066320/">Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Heather Rose’s memoir echoes Janet Frame and Alice Munro in its opening chapters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stella Prize</span></span>
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<p>Rose’s Hobart is in the process of transforming into modern suburbia, but is still rugged enough, dangerous enough, to inspire awe. Hers is a televisionless childhood of rotating dinner parties and neighbourhood bonfires, played out in a landscape arced by mountains, lapped by waters, in which a piece of cardboard will suffice as a toboggan on a snowy day and oysters can be prised straight from the rocks and out of their shells with a chisel. </p>
<p>All this changes one day, when her grandfather and older brother Byron go out fishing in an inadequately weighted dinghy and do not come back. Their drowning, a local tragedy, is doubly tragic because it will eventually capsize Rose’s immediate family.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/40-years-ago-protesters-were-celebrated-for-saving-the-franklin-river-today-they-could-be-jailed-for-months-191579">40 years ago, protesters were celebrated for saving the Franklin River. Today they could be jailed for months</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>Spirit-world encounters, post-tragedy</h2>
<p>It is in the aftermath of this tragedy that Rose’s spirit-world encounters begin. She becomes aware that she can see auras around people. She holds seances in which winter mists fog up the room and chains are heard dragging over rocks. </p>
<p>And, in the deleterious silence that pervades the house post-tragedy, in which her brother is not to be spoken of, she begins to have visitations from him. He appears in a doorway and in a chair: not as a frightening apparition but as a reassuring presence, offering succour and calm. She even has a premonitory vision of the son she will bear in the future, who appears before her as a grown man. </p>
<p>The deep enchantment of the Tasmanian landscape make such happenings seem as reasonable, as natural, as they are in Isabel Allende’s Chile or <a href="https://theconversation.com/among-colombian-nobel-winners-and-peace-seekers-gabriel-garcia-marquez-still-looms-largest-66840">Gabriel Garcia Marquez</a>’s Colombia, and I read these opening pages greedily. But Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here is memoir, not <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-magical-realism-51481">magical realism</a>, and it soon morphs into a different and, for me, less enchanting book, more reminiscent of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/authors/carlos-castaneda">Carlos Castaneda</a> than Janet Frame.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C35%2C5991%2C3952&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C35%2C5991%2C3952&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The deep enchantment of the Tasmanian landscape makes spirit-world encounters ‘seem as reasonable, as natural, as they are in Isabel Allende’s Chile or Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Colombia’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eddie Coghlan/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Rose briefly entertains notions of conventional religion as a child, but gives them up when the Christian God fails to deliver a pony after several months’ prayer. In her teenagehood and twenties, she turns to alternative spirituality. </p>
<p>She becomes interested in the theosophical society, an eclectic spiritual group with its roots in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/gnosticism">gnosticism</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-the-west-discovered-the-buddha-182140">Buddhism</a>, and the Findhorn Community, a Scottish group that invokes and practices environmental sustainability as a core part of its spirituality. She studies Buddhism in Bangkok and meditation in a monastery in Laos. And she voyages to New Mexico to undertake gruelling “sweat lodge” ceremonies, and commits to a four-year “vision quest” to dance the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Dance">Native American sun dance</a>: deprived of food and water, with eagle feathers sewn into her flesh.</p>
<p>This last is a visceral and unsettling experience. The Lakotan sun dance is a shamanic ritual that demands several days of dancing, alternated with intensive sweats, in the pursuit of a state of deeply altered consciousness. </p>
<p>Peace pipes are smoked. Neither food nor water is allowed. The flesh of Rose’s co-dancers is cut and bones are inserted in the wounds; ropes are attached to the bones and tied to trees, and from these ropes, dancers throw themselves multiple times until their skin splits and they are broken open, delivered, transcendentally freed. </p>
<p>I said this was hardcore.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/holy-womans-fleshy-feminist-spiritual-pilgrimage-is-a-warning-against-religious-coercive-control-185388">Holy Woman's fleshy, feminist spiritual pilgrimage is a warning against religious coercive control</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>Rose wonders – as do I – how it is that her kidneys keep functioning during this marathon of sauna bakes and dance deliriums. There is no explanation: it is another of the mysteries she embraces in her quest for spiritual meaning. </p>
<p>When the sun dance comes to its end, Rose’s “self” is eradicated; she is without language, returned to Nature, exquisitely sensate and utterly insensate: “By the time the last day unfurls, I am earth, trees, wind, sun and sky.” </p>
<p>There is an ascetism in Rose that is drawn to fleshly mortification: cold-water swimming, fasting, acts of physical endurance. “If there wasn’t pain and suffering, I wasn’t sure it was valid,” she writes. But just as I recoil from the notion of monastic self-flagellation, I recoiled from Rose’s masochistic spiritual pursuits. I am a material girl; I like my spiritual experiences couched in comfort: a bit of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-yoga-paradox-how-yoga-can-cause-pain-and-treat-it-80138">yoga</a>, the occasional joint. </p>
<p>And I found myself ambivalent, concerned for Rose and her fellow devotees, when she recounts a spiritual retreat in Uluru many years later. Here, the eradication of self goes further: Rose transforms into what she calls a “Heather-being”, barely cognisant of her own name, while several of her co-participants experience psychotic breaks and end up in psychiatric hospitals. I found this material difficult to unreservedly absorb, let alone embrace.</p>
<h2>Moments of raw beauty</h2>
<p>Am I here wrongly questioning Rose’s life experiences rather than her book? The content rather than the writing? Perhaps I am, but the two seem inseparable to me.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Rose is a masterful writer, astute to fine detail, and capable of conjuring both the wonder of the abstract and the specificity of the particular. She is the author of the acclaimed novels <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Heather-Rose-Museum-of-Modern-Love-9781760633394/">The Museum of Modern Love</a> (which won the 2017 Stella Prize) and <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Heather-Rose-Bruny-9781761068775/">Bruny</a>, as well as three other novels and several young adult novels. </p>
<p>There are moments of raw beauty in Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here, particularly when Rose recounts her experiences of meditation, where even the most humble temporal object is transformed into a thing of wonder and curiosity: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I see the way my hand holds a bowl. I feel the wooden broom against my fingers […] My body has become a tuning fork for sensations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I felt like a windvane attuned to a weather system of energy and acutely sensitive to the pain of people in passing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These are intense experiences of humility and stillness and and they made me turn my attention to my own reality as an organic form amongst other forms. </p>
<p>But Nothing Bad Ever Happens is also marred by spiritual homilies of the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/wellness-is-not-womens-friend-its-a-distraction-from-what-really-ails-us-177446">wellness</a>” variety: “Suffering is not simple”, “Joy is an act of courage”, “Forgiveness is a doorway to joy”. Yes, like all cliches, they contain a kernel of truth, but they are also somehow too easy in their summariness, too grammatically succinct to impart complexity. </p>
<p>And too structurally closed to allow for skepticism, confusion, resistance, argument: the things I need to make sense of the world. They don’t provide me enough pause or ambiguity. I can’t get a purchase on them.</p>
<p>Maybe I need to meditate more.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195425/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edwina Preston has received funding from Australia Council for the Arts and Creative Victoria. She was the recipient of the 2020 Felix Meyer Creative Writing Scholarship and the Helen Macpherson Smith Scholarship for female researchers. She works for the Australian Education Union.</span></em></p>In her new memoir, Stella Prize winner Heather Rose reflects on overcoming childhood trauma and adult pain with spiritual work. But our reviewer wishes it allowed moments of ‘pause or ambiguity’.Edwina Preston, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1822242022-06-28T19:58:53Z2022-06-28T19:58:53ZBig beautiful females and familiar dystopias: new graphic nonfiction interrogates 21st-century life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471282/original/file-20220628-11-ex91d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C121%2C2422%2C1684&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Image from big beautiful female theory by Eloise Grills (Affirm Press).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Affirm Press</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sam Wallman and Eloise Grills are both well known and much loved in the Australian comics scene. Their respective new books, <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/our-members-be-unlimited-9781925713053">Our Members Be Unlimited</a> (Scribe) and <a href="https://affirmpress.com.au/publishing/big-beautiful-female-theory/">big beautiful female theory</a> (Affirm Press) mark the first time with a mainstream publisher for each of them. Traditional publishing offers these authors the potential to reach new audiences and gain wider critical attention.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Our Members Be Unlimited by Sam Wallman (Scribe) and big beautiful female theory by Eloise Grills (Affirm Press)</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471290/original/file-20220628-26-y2t4bx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471290/original/file-20220628-26-y2t4bx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471290/original/file-20220628-26-y2t4bx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471290/original/file-20220628-26-y2t4bx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471290/original/file-20220628-26-y2t4bx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471290/original/file-20220628-26-y2t4bx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471290/original/file-20220628-26-y2t4bx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471290/original/file-20220628-26-y2t4bx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Affirm and Scribe have established themselves as notable small publishers in Australia, holding their own on the Australian literary award circuit. </p>
<p>Wallman’s journalistic examination of unionism through comics is Scribe’s second extended graphic narrative. (The first was <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/two-week-wait-9781925713824">Two Week Wait: An IVF Story</a>, written by Luke and Kelly Jackson and illustrated by Mara Wild.) Grills’ deeply personal exploration of self is Affirm’s first foray into the world of adult graphic narrative. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ten-of-australias-best-literary-comics-98766">Ten of Australia's best literary comics</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Graphic growth</h2>
<p>Graphic narratives are a growth area in mainstream book publishing. Australian readers <a href="https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2022/05/04/213684/the-meteoric-rise-of-manga/">purchased</a> more than a million graphic novels across 25,000 unique titles during 2020, generating A$23.1 million in sales.</p>
<p>They are receiving critical attention too. In 2022, <a href="https://theconversation.com/stella-prize-shortlist-2022-your-guide-to-six-urgent-boundary-breaking-books-181596">Stone Fruit</a> by Lee Lai was the first graphic novel shortlisted for the Stella Prize, after Mandy Ord’s <a href="https://stella.org.au/prize/2020-prize/one-person-dies-whole-world/">When One Person Dies the Whole World is Over</a> made the longlist in 2020. </p>
<p>Safdar Ahmed won the <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/awards/book-year/2022-winner-still-alive">NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Book of the Year</a> and the Multicultural NSW Award for his graphic narrative non-fiction, Still Alive: Notes from Australia’s Immigration Detention System; Ahmed has also been shortlisted for the <a href="https://cbca.org.au/book/still-alive-notes-from-australias-immigration-detention-system">Eve Pownall Award</a>, the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s award for non-fiction. </p>
<p>These mainstream shortlistings and prizes show that books using the visual-verbal strategies of graphic narrative are being recognised alongside traditional prose novels and narrative non-fiction. And the once ubiquitous <a href="https://www.theonion.com/comics-not-just-for-kids-anymore-reports-85-000th-main-1819573609">headlines</a> about comics being <em>no longer just for kids</em> are nowhere in sight. This phrase has been a regular mainstay of comics criticism, managing to insult comics and children at the same time by suggesting anything colourful or using a visual, illustrative mode was “for children” and therefore not worthy of critical attention.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heroes-villains-biology-3-reasons-comic-books-are-great-science-teachers-143251">Heroes, villains ... biology: 3 reasons comic books are great science teachers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Crossover appeal</h2>
<p>Indeed, Ahmed’s shortlistings in both adult and children’s categories demonstrates the crossover appeal of comics. Literary judges, publishers, librarians, teachers, academics and the reading public are all becoming more aware of the form. </p>
<p>We’re becoming a more sophisticated readership, accustomed to what the Victorian Curriculum Authority calls <a href="https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/multimodal/Pages/multimodaloverview.aspx">multimodal literacy</a> – which also includes film and animation, even dance – where more than one mode in the text conveys meaning (such as text and image in comics). We’re employing back-and-forth reading strategies; closely attending to details; navigating gaps by making inferences and connections. We’re developing the skill to read nuance in the disjunctive form of comics, and to reward sophistication and accomplishment.</p>
<p>In Australia, most comics creators are self-taught, apprenticing themselves through creative experimentation, reading and research, and engaging with informal networks and communities of practice. These can form around communities and events such as zine fairs, Melbourne’s <a href="https://www.stickyinstitute.com/">Sticky Institute</a> and the <a href="https://comicartworkshop.com.au/">Comics Art Workshop</a>, a residential retreat run by a collective for local and international graphic storytellers. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471094/original/file-20220627-12-uxuk78.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471094/original/file-20220627-12-uxuk78.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471094/original/file-20220627-12-uxuk78.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471094/original/file-20220627-12-uxuk78.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471094/original/file-20220627-12-uxuk78.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471094/original/file-20220627-12-uxuk78.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471094/original/file-20220627-12-uxuk78.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471094/original/file-20220627-12-uxuk78.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Melbourne’s Sticky Institute.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sticky Institute</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Comics creators may have studied creative writing and even come across a unit in graphic narratives. They may have degrees in visual arts or graphic design. Some have no tertiary qualifications at all. For the most part, learning happens through the process of making. </p>
<p>There is no formal training in Australia for publishers of comics and graphic narratives. I’m not sure whether any informal communities of practice exist. As graphic narratives have boomed in children’s, young adult and adult markets overseas, in Australia we seem to have a gap when it comes to publishing longform graphic works. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471036/original/file-20220627-20-8jdrgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471036/original/file-20220627-20-8jdrgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471036/original/file-20220627-20-8jdrgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471036/original/file-20220627-20-8jdrgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471036/original/file-20220627-20-8jdrgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471036/original/file-20220627-20-8jdrgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471036/original/file-20220627-20-8jdrgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471036/original/file-20220627-20-8jdrgt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Safdar Ahmed is published by <a href="https://www.twelvepanelspress.com/">Twelve Panels Press</a>, a passion project set up by children’s publisher Erica Wagner, formerly of Allen & Unwin, academic Elizabeth MacFarlane and comics author and editor Bernard Caleo, to address the absence of a specialist graphic novel publisher in Australia. Many of our talented creators end up being signed and published overseas: Rachel Ang, Tommi Parrish, Campbell Whyte, Simon Hanselmann and Lee Lai to name a few. </p>
<p>It’s heartening that small publishers are willing to take a chance on comics acquisitions despite the long lead time and the cost of producing illustrated texts. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/will-eisner-and-the-evolution-of-the-graphic-novel-73892">Will Eisner and the evolution of the graphic novel</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Invisible labour of editing</h2>
<p>As I read, I found myself wondering about the invisible labour of editing: how much development work was done, or how much these creators relied on their own self-editing practice. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471291/original/file-20220628-22-k101si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471291/original/file-20220628-22-k101si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471291/original/file-20220628-22-k101si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471291/original/file-20220628-22-k101si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471291/original/file-20220628-22-k101si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471291/original/file-20220628-22-k101si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471291/original/file-20220628-22-k101si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471291/original/file-20220628-22-k101si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Structurally, there was some fragmentation in <a href="https://affirmpress.com.au/publishing/big-beautiful-female-theory/">big beautiful female theory</a> that may have been overcome by a strong mentoring relationship with a publisher – but it’s hard to imagine a first-time publisher having the skills to do more than enter into a rich, productive dialogue about what might be possible. </p>
<p><a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/our-members-be-unlimited-9781925713053">Our Members Be Unlimited</a> was more cohesive; however, there are a few accessibility issues. In chapter nine, “Work Today and Work Tomorrow”, the text is small and hard to read. I felt this could have been overcome in the way the page was laid out. Some of the contrasts were tricky to manage in anything but the brightest light; I couldn’t read it on a plane.</p>
<p>I had similar problems with the comics in Grills’ work. This may be deliberate – be awake, be attentive, press your nose to the page, breathe it in – but I also wondered what sort of decisions a more experienced comics publisher might have made. I make the point to illuminate the fact that our comics creators are currently ahead of our trade book publishers in the craft of making comics. It’s important that Australian publishers are supported to catch up. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-remarkable-prize-winning-rise-of-our-small-publishers-95645">Friday essay: the remarkable, prize-winning rise of our small publishers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘No such thing as society’?</h2>
<p>In Our Members Be Unlimited, Sam Wallman quotes Margaret Thatcher: “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women.” I found myself thinking about this as I read both of these graphic narratives. </p>
<p>We’ve been trained by capitalism to see ourselves as discrete units: personalities located in minds trapped in bone skulls, bound and separated by skin from others, each of us with a our own unique perception of the world. Grills reinforces how lonely this is, while Wallman reminds us we are interdependent organisms, part of a collective whole.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471289/original/file-20220628-20-y2t4bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471289/original/file-20220628-20-y2t4bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471289/original/file-20220628-20-y2t4bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471289/original/file-20220628-20-y2t4bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471289/original/file-20220628-20-y2t4bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471289/original/file-20220628-20-y2t4bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471289/original/file-20220628-20-y2t4bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471289/original/file-20220628-20-y2t4bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edited image extract from Our Members Be Unlimited: A Comic About Workers and Their Unions by Sam Wallman (Scribe).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>big beautiful female theory combines personal narrative, poetry, critical theory, argument, illustration and comics to explore embodied identity. Grills shows how embodied female identity forms (and evolves) from early girlhood, through adolescence and into adulthood: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I was fourteen, me and my friends sat on MSN pretending to be seventeen-year-old girls with 34DD chests, talking to forty-year-old men who are pretending to be seventeen-year-old boys with 9-inch willies.</p>
<p>When I was 14, I wanted more than anything to be desired.</p>
<p>When I was 14, I didn’t want anyone to fucken touch me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Grills uses the illustrative mode to play with reader perception, to monopolise our collective gaze; we’re often forced to be voyeurs, looking at her body in ways that make us complicit. Grills plays with female agency, but it’s not straightforward self-empowerment. The narrative accompanying her images is aware of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-the-male-gaze-mean-and-what-about-a-female-gaze-52486">determining male gaze</a>, and demonstrates how it impacts her sense of self and well-being.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471038/original/file-20220627-26-vn1aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471038/original/file-20220627-26-vn1aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471038/original/file-20220627-26-vn1aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471038/original/file-20220627-26-vn1aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471038/original/file-20220627-26-vn1aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471038/original/file-20220627-26-vn1aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471038/original/file-20220627-26-vn1aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471038/original/file-20220627-26-vn1aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Image extract from big beautiful female theory by Eloise Grills (Affirm Press).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Grills is particularly interested in size and scale, exploring “thin” and “fat” subjectivities, which become her focus in the chapter “The fat bitch in art”. She explores the way women have been looked at, idealised and painted by men (and the way models have been treated at the hands of male artists), as well as the way women painters and photographers have represented themselves. It’s one of the strongest chapters in the collection. Grills seamlessly shimmies between self-disclosure and references to other artists as she reveals the social dynamics of self-representation. </p>
<p>Elsewhere Grills’ relentless double-coding, in which text and image communicate the same message, can get a bit intense – pushing us away while also drawing us uncomfortably close. This, as it turns out, is a deliberate strategy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is your eye: wide as a saucer</p>
<p>This is your mouth: a yawning dinnerplate</p>
<p>This was mine but I’ve handed it over
a gift, a wart I’ve sold you
yours to deal with</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Grills fluctuates between radical self-acceptance and abjecting herself. As a woman reader, I am aware that I generate and multiply the internalised male gaze, and that I am also an object of it. Grills reflects, refracts and inflects my own sense of well-being, embodied precarity, vulnerability, violence, and abjection. She makes sure her reader knows that art-making and writing are ambivalent acts for her. They don’t necessarily alleviate the trauma of growing up female.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471040/original/file-20220627-18-zlq65v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471040/original/file-20220627-18-zlq65v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471040/original/file-20220627-18-zlq65v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471040/original/file-20220627-18-zlq65v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471040/original/file-20220627-18-zlq65v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471040/original/file-20220627-18-zlq65v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471040/original/file-20220627-18-zlq65v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471040/original/file-20220627-18-zlq65v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration from big beautiful female theory by Eloise Grills (Affirm Press).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All of this left me with uncomfortable questions about my own role, as a reader, in perpetuating the suffering of women who feel compelled to disclose. It’s certainly something to think about as I teach young women who want to explore these themes in experimental, lyric non-fiction. </p>
<p>While I am inclined to warn them of the risk of disclosure and how it might impact them, it’s also important to be sensitive to the need or desire to disclose in the first place, and their agency in doing so. Grills’ text could aid a conversation about teaching students to observe and attend to the effects of disclosure on art-making and well-being, while leaving it up to them to decide what they’re comfortable with.</p>
<h2>Making collective action personal</h2>
<p>Sam Wallman’s work offers a history of labourers’ collective action and unionism through the 19th and 20th centuries. Wallman also places unionism in the context of 21st-century precarity through his personal account of working as a picker in Amazon’s Melbourne warehouse. This is one of the great strengths of his comics: the personal is political, but the political is also depicted as felt experience, deeply personal. </p>
<p>Wallman narrates the closeness and interdependence of his fellow workers at Amazon, and at the same time depicts the struggle of recruiting contemporary workers to the union. His colleagues feel frustrated, powerless, dehumanised – but also just want to get through their shifts, earn their money and clock off for the day, without risking drawing extra attention to themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471286/original/file-20220628-23-ex91d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a scanner screen" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471286/original/file-20220628-23-ex91d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471286/original/file-20220628-23-ex91d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471286/original/file-20220628-23-ex91d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471286/original/file-20220628-23-ex91d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471286/original/file-20220628-23-ex91d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471286/original/file-20220628-23-ex91d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471286/original/file-20220628-23-ex91d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edited image extract from Our Members Be Unlimited: A Comic About Workers and Their Unions by Sam Wallman (Scribe).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scribe</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wallman shows us the messaging app on his scanner gun, a communication device that anonymously tells workers what to do and when to do it: to work faster, to stay behind an extra two hours, to knock off an hour early (without pay). This is at once dystopian and horrifyingly familiar. </p>
<p>It’s chilling to realise the many ways in which we all already live in this reality – how enculturated we are to obey the machines, the micro-tools employed in service of the giant human-powered machine. Not just at work, but every time we enter a system: health, school, Centrelink, financial services. Even my own children use my phone signal to monitor my movements. </p>
<p>The comics medium allows the reader to digest a lot of information very quickly. We can absorb historical facts while also seeing how that history was lived in the body. The past and the present are juxtaposed to help remind us that the collective strength and knowledge we can draw on to solve the problems of the present does not just include our immediate contemporaries. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471285/original/file-20220628-13-kcum6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="two men walking through a barrier - one is smiling, the other is confused" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471285/original/file-20220628-13-kcum6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471285/original/file-20220628-13-kcum6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471285/original/file-20220628-13-kcum6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471285/original/file-20220628-13-kcum6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471285/original/file-20220628-13-kcum6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471285/original/file-20220628-13-kcum6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471285/original/file-20220628-13-kcum6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edited image extract from Our Members Be Unlimited: A Comic About Workers and Their Unions by Sam Wallman (Scribe).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scribe</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wallman’s special skill is showing relationships: between people, between systems, between ideas. (By contrast, Grills focuses on the isolated, commodified, individual body.) He employs various strategies to depict political collectivism and biological interdependence, whether it’s in scenes where bodies are amorphous and faceless, or scenes of collective endeavours where “rounder”, more visually descriptive characters work together towards a common goal. In the former, Wallman removes the face and other features to highlight the lumbering, gentle giant that is the body – that workhorse that carries us through life. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471287/original/file-20220628-15-5luxdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Workers with matchstick heads push trolleys around a warehouse" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471287/original/file-20220628-15-5luxdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471287/original/file-20220628-15-5luxdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471287/original/file-20220628-15-5luxdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471287/original/file-20220628-15-5luxdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471287/original/file-20220628-15-5luxdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471287/original/file-20220628-15-5luxdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471287/original/file-20220628-15-5luxdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edited image extract from Our Members Be Unlimited: A Comic About Workers and Their Unions by Sam Wallman (Scribe).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/they-track-our-every-move-why-the-cards-were-stacked-against-a-union-at-amazon-159531">'They track our every move': why the cards were stacked against a union at Amazon</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The work of capitalism</h2>
<p>In the weeks that I read, thought about, lived with, and wrote about these comics (physically toting them back and forth between my office in Sydney and my home in Melbourne), I was teaching two undergraduate classes: one was a combined first- and second-year narrative theory class, in which we covered, among other things, the abject, queer fabulism, and the narrative gaze.</p>
<p>The other class I taught was a third-year industry subject (project-based, inquiry-led), looking at issues of work and labour in the writing and publishing industry: including underpayment, lack of representation and diversity across the sector, lack of transparency in work conditions and unionism in the bookselling and publishing industry. </p>
<p>Next year, both these books will have a place in my curriculum, if I am still there to teach these classes. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471284/original/file-20220628-23-2mjpl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471284/original/file-20220628-23-2mjpl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471284/original/file-20220628-23-2mjpl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471284/original/file-20220628-23-2mjpl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471284/original/file-20220628-23-2mjpl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471284/original/file-20220628-23-2mjpl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471284/original/file-20220628-23-2mjpl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471284/original/file-20220628-23-2mjpl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Image extract from big beautiful female theory, Eloise Grills (Affirm Press).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a 47-year-old woman, I know I am now barely relevant to the determining male gaze Grills reveals and critiques, though I continue to feel its ongoing regulatory effects. As a mother of three children, I am most aware of the way it delimits their bodies. </p>
<p>I see the gaze in their Instagram feeds, in their consumer choices, in the way they define and express their gender identities, and in the manifestations of their mental illnesses. </p>
<p>Wallman’s comic made me aware of the extent to which the panopticon of capitalism has co-opted my eye. It sees me when I’m sleeping, it knows when I’m awake. I am aware, writing this review, of my own precarity: I’m currently 18 months into a two-year, fixed-term contract. </p>
<p>Even writing that sentence feels risky, like I’m writing it on the feedback whiteboard next to the manager’s desk at Amazon, with three security cameras pointed at it. In my daily work, which often involves teaching alone in the converted vestibule of my house where the front door used to be, I do the work of capitalism: I’m always self-monitoring my own productivity. In fact, I rose early today, just so I could finish this review before my working day began.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182224/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Penni Russon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two radically inventive new works of Australian graphic nonfiction dig deep into 21st-century life. They balance critique with hopeful possibilities – of collective change and radical acceptance.Penni Russon, Senior Lecturer, School of Communication, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1821202022-04-28T10:20:00Z2022-04-28T10:20:00ZFirst Nations poet Evelyn Araluen wins the 2022 Stella Prize with a ‘wild ride’ skewering colonial mythologies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460169/original/file-20220427-16-1t45jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C6%2C4141%2C3617&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Evelyn Araluen</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stuart Spence/Stella Prize</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>First Nations poet Evelyn Araluen has won the 10th annual Stella Prize with a debut poetry collection that confronts the cultural evasions of an unreconciled Australia with a tender fury. </p>
<p>Australian poetics is the target of Araluen’s dark satire in <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/dropbear">Dropbear</a>. Her poetry deftly dismantles the literary mythos that conjures the Australian landscape as ghostly, haunted and empty, or else reproduces it as a cultural commodity in the guise of “Australiana” kitsch.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460171/original/file-20220427-22-s1pe8g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460171/original/file-20220427-22-s1pe8g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460171/original/file-20220427-22-s1pe8g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460171/original/file-20220427-22-s1pe8g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460171/original/file-20220427-22-s1pe8g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460171/original/file-20220427-22-s1pe8g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460171/original/file-20220427-22-s1pe8g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460171/original/file-20220427-22-s1pe8g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>In either case, this mythos does violence by refusing to acknowledge the living presence of Aboriginal people, of Aboriginal lands and their custodians, or else by conjuring up hollow tokens of Aboriginal presence in a variety of gaudy, empty or shell-like forms. Both are acts of silencing. </p>
<p>A descendant of the Bundjalung nation, born and raised on Dharug Country, Araluen is co-editor of <a href="https://overland.org.au/">Overland</a> literary journal. Her criticism and poetry has won the <a href="https://www.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/about/indigenous-programs/nakata-brophy">Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers</a> and the <a href="https://overland.org.au/prizes/overland-judith-wright-poetry-prize-for-new-and-emerging-poets/">Judith Wright Poetry Prize</a>, among other awards.</p>
<p>The chair of the Stella judging panel, award winning Bundjalung author Melissa Lucashenko, described Dropbear as a “wild ride” that is both “comical and dangerous” – just like the legendary predatory marsupial after which the collection is named. (This creature, of urban myth, is said to kill unwary prey by dropping on their heads out of bush canopies.)</p>
<p>The judges described the winning book as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a breathtaking collection of poetry and short prose which arrests key icons of mainstream Australian culture and turns them inside out, with malice aforethought. Araluen’s brilliance sizzles when she goes on the attack against the kitsch and the cuddly: against Australia’s fantasy of its own racial and environmental innocence.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Taking aim at Australiana</h2>
<p>Dropbear is both deeply funny and deadly serious. </p>
<p>Araluen indicts the “ghost gums” that proliferate across literary landscapes in regions far beyond their natural habitat. She takes aim at the iconography of Australian childhood, including May Gibbs’ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snugglepot_and_Cuddlepie">Snugglepot and Cuddlepie</a>, Dorothy Wall’s <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780732284350/blinky-bill/">Blinky Bill</a>, and Ethel Pedley’s <a href="https://readingaustralia.com.au/books/dot-and-the-kangaroo/">Dot and the Kangaroo</a>. </p>
<p>Each is artfully unravelled to expose the racial mythologies that pervade and are perpetuated by these popular childhood texts. </p>
<p>It is easy to skate along the seductive surface of Araluen’s poems, swept along by the rhythms of language and dancing images. Take “Dropbear Poetics”, for example, which condemns the ironic consumption of Australiana kitsch by pseudo-revolutionaries with their “fucking postmod blinky bill” and “gollywog ashtray snugglepot”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460183/original/file-20220428-24-sh9343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460183/original/file-20220428-24-sh9343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460183/original/file-20220428-24-sh9343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460183/original/file-20220428-24-sh9343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460183/original/file-20220428-24-sh9343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460183/original/file-20220428-24-sh9343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460183/original/file-20220428-24-sh9343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460183/original/file-20220428-24-sh9343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Dropbear, Evelyn Araluen unravels the mythos of Australian kitsch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Or “Bad Taxidermy”, a tour de force of cuddly kitsch, in which the reader encounters images of “Kylie Minogue in hotpants and a hot pink koala knit” that generates a “bidding war on eBay”, alongside an “Instagram ad for Australian Native Birthflower charms”, a Tasmanian Devil with a “faintly otter-like lift of his small dark paws on the acrylic shelf”, and a “lungfish nailed to a birch board”. </p>
<p>None of this is innocent. For non-Aboriginal readers, these cultural commodities may present themselves as an ironic coming to terms with Australian identity. They may appear to offer a paradoxical way of being at home in an alien landscape, a supposed resolution of guilt, cringe and crisis. But for Aboriginal people they are part of an ongoing invasion – a reinvented colonial mythos that appropriates and silences the history, culture and languages of First Nations people.</p>
<p>In Araluen’s poems, these cultural commodities are not being ironically replayed but clinically dissected, and shredded. “Bad Taxidermy” finds Araluen shouting at “the man laughing in the anthropology museum” and “Angling my reflection out of photos of cabinets with drawings of my ancestors rubbing sticks”.</p>
<p>But there is also love, warmth and care in this collection, in its evocations of family and in tender poems for the things, places, experiences and peoples that have been “erased, exploited or violated in the short but haunted history of Australian literature”. </p>
<p>Dropbear reaches down into everyday lived experience, in essays such as “To the Parents” and the poem “Moving Day”, a reverie on the meaning of moving home when home has been stolen or destroyed. </p>
<p>Dropbear offers a poetics of resistance. It is, as Lucashenko points out, “a playful beast, a prank, a riddle, a challenge, and a game”. But like the mythical creature for which the collection is named, it is not gentle and can be “dangerous”. It offers no easy or cosy reconciliation with history. </p>
<p>Read this collection, and it may change the way you see. Or else, as Lucashenko says, “If you live here and don’t acquire the necessary local knowledge, the dropbear might definitely getcha!”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182120/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Evelyn Araluen’s award-winning book Dropbear is a sizzling collection of poetry and prose that is both deeply funny and deadly serious.Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1815962022-04-27T19:59:53Z2022-04-27T19:59:53ZStella Prize shortlist 2022: your guide to six urgent, boundary-breaking books<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459710/original/file-20220426-18-c97byp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1500%2C747&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The shortlisted Stella authors: (clockwise from top left to right) Elfie Shiosaki, Evelyn Araluen, Anwen Crawford, Jennifer Down, Lee Lai and Eunice Andrada.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stella Prize/The Conversation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year the <a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-voices-metoo-and-disrupting-genre-how-the-tenth-stella-longlist-reflects-its-mission-of-creating-change-177707">Stella Prize</a> has shortlisted a searing collection of experimental work. What these writers have to say won’t fit within the boundaries of literary convention. </p>
<p>The shortlisted books, including poetry, essays, graphic fiction and just one novel, tear apart traditional forms, making language over again. And because language is the first tool we reach for to understand the world, old ways of seeing and thinking are also jettisoned. </p>
<p>The issues these books address are urgent – histories of institutionalised racism, the Stolen Generations, the sexual abuse of women and children in frightening numbers, dark memories caught up and entangled in the present. </p>
<p>The impact feels – at times – like a head-on collision. The reader is stuck in the headlights, and there’s nowhere to hide. </p>
<p>But there are also moments of joy – and the effect is strangely hopeful, bringing a sense that all this energy can be harnessed to build a better future. </p>
<p>These books are not easily summed up. But here are some clues. </p>
<h2>Homecoming by Elfie Shiosaki</h2>
<p>The colonial archive is violent. Elfie Shiosaki’s collection of poetry, archival fragments and spoken stories – family letters, letters of protest, records of the Aborigines Department, fragments of evidence and testimony tendered to commissions of inquiry – speaks back to the archive’s violence.</p>
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<p>It also performs what Shiosaki calls “restorative storywork”, weaving together the stories of four generations of Noongar women (of which Shiosaki’s mother is the fifth, and Shiosaki is the sixth), making palpable the felt life that is absent from the historical record.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.magabala.com/products/homecoming">Homecoming</a> contains pages with startling power. The found poem “Records of Slavery” chillingly describes the history of colonialism by transcribing the “Personal History Card” of Shiosaki’s great-grandmother, revealing the shocking extent of surveillance of, and interference with, the lives of Aboriginal people, carried out by AO Neville, <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-chapter-7">Chief Protector of Aborigines from 1915-1940</a>.</p>
<p>The card catalogued the places Shiosaki’s great-grandmother went, every job she had, who she worked for, and what she earned – an ever-dwindling amount. These truths appear alongside stories that Shiosaki cannot find in the archive. In the prose poem, “Venus”, tales of happy beach gatherings that made “my grandmother’s eyes dance”, foreground this Noongar woman’s beauty and daring, something the archive could never encompass. </p>
<p>The effect is intimate and personal, but also epic in the breadth of its history of Aboriginal people: a history filled with dignified refusal and acts of defiance.</p>
<h2>Stone Fruit by Lee Lai</h2>
<p>Nessie – a joyful, wild and perceptive child – is the bright spark at the heart of Lee Lai’s graphic novel <a href="https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/stone-fruit">Stone Fruit</a>. Nessie’s playdates spent romping through the park with her queer aunties, Ray and Bron, are a haven in the women’s lives: a moment of respite, away from the angst and struggle of Ray and Bron’s relationship. </p>
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<p>With its sparse, naturalistic storyline, Stone Fruit shows how painful it can be to connect with the people closest to you. The lyrical black-and-white pen drawings, with touches of blue wash, artfully capture the intimacy of characters who find it difficult to say what they think and feel. </p>
<p>Both women try to connect with their families, as their relationship with each other erodes. Bron, with her ultra-religious relatives, who cannot understand who she is or what she needs. Ray, with her harried, overworked, single-mother sister, who incessantly worries that her inadequacies are making her a bad parent. </p>
<p>Only when Ray and Bron are with Nessie can they really be themselves. Lee Lai captures this sense of freedom with her pen, transforming them into magical creatures running through grass and trees, filled with joy and energy, at ease with themselves and connected to the world. </p>
<h2>Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/bodies-of-light">Bodies of Light</a>, Jennifer Down’s second novel, is a study in empathy. Its protagonist, Maggie Sullivan, elicits an astonishing depth of emotion from the reader. Maggie’s mother dies of an overdose when she is two. By the age of four, she has been sexually assaulted by her father’s friend – an event the reader infers as Maggie relays the experience through the things she can understand; she has bruises, and it hurts to pee. </p>
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<p>After Maggie’s drug-addicted father is jailed for injecting and accidentally killing a friend, Maggie is taken into state care. Here, she is caught up in the vast welfare machinery of “cottage parents” and “resi units”, of scheduled meal times and TV times. Through it all, she tries to outrun her damage. </p>
<p>At least part of the novel’s brilliance is the empathy with which Maggie sees the world. “I thought about what it must be like … to see your likeness in someone else’s face, to share another’s memories.” Guarded and wary, Maggie does not search for blue skies, but “a hollow to fall through”. She shifts names and continents, only to find that who she is cannot be disentangled from the past.</p>
<p>This book is unafraid of sentiment, and indeed, calculated to elicit it. Maggie is a character who tries to make herself as “small as possible” but generates a reality that is huge.</p>
<h2>No Document by Anwen Crawford</h2>
<p>Anwen Crawford’s experimental work defies easy categorisation. It opens with a description of George Franju’s documentary <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/works/72474--the-blood-of-the-beast-le-sang-des-betes/">Le Sang des Betes</a>, and perhaps the logic of the image – the structure of films and photographs – ties the collection together. </p>
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<p>It is what allows Crawford to trace uncanny parallels between a horse at the abattoir – looking momentarily like a statuary piece from a carousel before it is shot, with a bolt through its head – and memories of protests and police horses, images of air strikes and dead civilians, of displaced people and asylum seekers in boats, “lying hot in the shadow cast by shipping containers” on the Tampa, journeying to Woomera and Christmas Island, and fleeing airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. She interrogates the belief, ripped from media soundbites and news headlines, that Australians “don’t behave barbarically”.</p>
<p><a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/no-document/">No Document</a> is also a personal mediation on pain and loss (dedicated to a friend of Crawford’s who has died), in which her own pain mingles with the world’s injustices. “A hospital psychologist advised me to distinguish my own moods from the state of the world,” Crawford writes. </p>
<p>This essay marks her refusal. Grids and lines are inserted into the text, marking borders and boundaries. Missing words mark gaps in imagination and memory, making emptiness visible. Through it all, the abattoir is a recurring motif.</p>
<p>The reader will find themselves searching for moments of respite, like the photograph her deceased friend once brought to art class, showing the artist “kneeling at night on a pavement, digging through the concrete till it cracks, and then planting a sapling in the new wound”. </p>
<p>Here is hope – until the writer corrects you, and the text throws up fresh anguish.</p>
<h2>Drop Bear by Evelyn Araluen</h2>
<p>Evelyn Araluen, a descendant of the Bundjalung nation, tackles colonial appropriation in <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/dropbear">her debut collection</a> of prose and poetry, repurposing white settler tropes to speak back to a long history of colonial myth-making by turning myth, kitsch and cliché back on itself. </p>
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<p>Araluen’s work cuts through literary conventions that treat the Australian landscape as an empty abyss, or conjure Country as a clichéd object of kitsch affection, populated by Bad Banksia Men and Gumnut Babies: a mythic interior where women endlessly tend hearth and home, as men drive sheep and rabbits across frontiers. </p>
<p>“Playing in the Pastoral” dissects the Arcadian genre as “a series of modes which assimilate natural and human worlds into objects of white Endeavour”. The frontier mythos of “discovery” is once again the object of dark pastiche in “The Last Endeavour”, which conjures the expedition of a “botanist captain astronomer”, “lips blessed with blood and coal” and the “boast of seal-touched hands”.</p>
<p>These white settler tropes are powerfully juxtaposed with the reality of a modern Australian landscape carved up into suburban sprawl like a “magic pudding for settlers to eat, and eat, and eat”. </p>
<p>“Humans! Please be kind to all Bush CreaturesTM”, Araluen writes in “Mrs Kookaburra Addresses the Natives”. In this poem, satirising May Gibbs appropriation of “This Delightful BushTM”, even “sadness” is marked “copyright”.</p>
<p>Words burn on every page.</p>
<h2>TAKE CARE by Eunice Andrada</h2>
<p>Violence is “a structure, not an event”, writes Andrada, in her visceral poetry collection. <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/eunice-andrada-take-care/">TAKE CARE</a> traces themes from imperialism and colonialism to everyday misogyny, sexual assault, and climate change.</p>
<p>Images of N95 masks and Dettol wipes are scattered throughout, conjuring the years of flood, fire and plague – and striking the reader with unease – in a collection that pays particular attention to the ways in which structural inequalities and sexual exploitation intersect with histories of racism.</p>
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<p>Andrada’s collection is divided into four parts: “Take”, “Comfort”, “Revenge” and “Care”. </p>
<p>“Comfort” uses documentary fragments to trace the contours of acts of rape within a history of military violence. “Another statue dedicated to ‘comfort women’ who were enslaved and raped in wartime has been removed in the Philippines,” the sequence starts. The words are rendered illegible by the silhouette of an erection that slices through the text, surfacing in reverse on the next page, “the reminder of a woman raped: in/tolerable, too real/too real, too real …” </p>
<p>The title of the collection, “TAKE CARE”, is double-edged. It signifies concern – an injunction to take care of yourself – but is also a warning that there is something the reader needs to be careful of, or frightened about. It is apt for a collection highlighting the failures of a society that promises equity and inclusion, but constantly falls short.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The 2022 Stella Prize winner will be announced tonight, April 28.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181596/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For the first time, only one novel has been shortlisted, amid works of poetry, essays and graphic fiction. They tackle big issues - racism, grief, sexual abuse - but are leavened by joy.Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1587822021-04-21T20:14:49Z2021-04-21T20:14:49ZThe Stella shortlist: your guide to 2021’s powerful, emotional books<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395399/original/file-20210416-14-1pmvg2v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1497%2C750&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Stella Prize/The Conversation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editors’ note: We congratulate Evie Wyld, winner of the 2021 Stella Prize for her book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43413011-the-bass-rock">The Bass Rock</a>. Zoya Patel, Chair of the 2021 Stella Judging Panel says: “Evie Wyld has chosen each and every word with precision, building a novel that is a true work of art.”</em></p>
<p>Each year, The Stella Prize honours writing by women. Good. We’ve come a long way. We’ve a long way to go.</p>
<p>The 2021 shortlist encompasses contemporary fiction, historical fiction, and non-fiction, and undertakes impressive trapeze acts across genre boundaries. </p>
<p>The books investigate the riddle of familial duty and the cost of patriarchy; Australia’s racist colonial history; species-ism and humanity as it exists within the natural world; the devastating impact of sexual violence for victims as well as criminal justice professionals; the trauma associated with physical violence inflicted upon women. </p>
<p>The authors write about sacrifice, grief, mental illness, power, privilege and connectivity.</p>
<p>Collectively, the books are testament to the minds of thinking, writing women mapping the architecture of social and cultural change.</p>
<h2>WINNER: The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld</h2>
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<p>At the opening of Evie Wyld’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43413011-the-bass-rock">The Bass Rock</a> a young girl discovers a suitcase washed up on the beach: a dead woman’s fingers inching out, and between them, an eye that blinks. </p>
<p>At the novel’s closing, a woman is hurriedly packing a suitcase for her and her daughter, intending to leave an abusive marriage. She is waiting for a taxi when the front door quietly closes. </p>
<p>These two short scenes frame a novel that dwells on the violence inflicted on three women by manipulating and aggressive men. Set on the coast of Scotland, the dark volcanic <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/scotland/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-bass-rock/">Bass Rock</a> looms over North Berwick as a dark presence around which the stories are fashioned.</p>
<p>In the 21st century, Viviane is living an unpredictable existence in London, when her Uncle Christopher requests she look after the family home in North Berwick until it is sold. </p>
<p>Shortly after the second world war, Ruth is living in the same North Berwick house with new husband Peter and his two sons. </p>
<p>In the 18th century, Joseph recounts how Sarah, accused of being a witch and brutally raped by village boys, is saved from being burned by his father. But when the thugs rally support, the girl and family must run, or they could all burn.</p>
<p>The Bass Rock has seven sections, each containing five chapters that move from the present through to the past and back again. Themes of mental illness and grief are braided into the novel, and the young children in Ruth’s story, become the older characters in Viviane’s. </p>
<p>At the end of each section a short tale is recounted about a nameless woman; each woman suffering maltreatment.</p>
<p>This is a deeply disturbing novel, yet one also revelling in grace and the small wonders of life: new and fragile friendships, tender moments of love and unearthly happenings.</p>
<p><em>–Catherine McKinnon</em></p>
<h2>Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Giggs</h2>
<p>Many of us enjoy venturing a few metres out into the sea to swim, surf or just cool off. Rebecca Giggs’ enthralling <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52765413">Fathoms: The World in the Whale</a> presents whales as immense, enigmatic, intelligent and majestic sea creatures, but also vividly describes the intricate ecosystem of the vast oceans in which they live and die.</p>
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<p>Drawing from science, history, literature, art and mythology, Fathoms is both epic in scale and rich in detail about the life cycle of whales, their behaviours and <a href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/social-lives-of-whales.html">sociality</a>. </p>
<p>This sweeping research is interspersed with Giggs’ own quest for understanding, which begins at a whale <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-causes-whale-mass-strandings-72985">stranding</a> and continues through experiences of eating whale meat and closely observing these mammals on a whale watching tour.</p>
<p>This makes Fathoms filled with information but also personal, as Giggs weaves her own insights and feelings about whales and the natural world into the narrative.</p>
<p>Arguing passionately for whales’ right to survive, many of her stories of our treatment of these creatures are heartbreaking and haunting. Whether it is humans <a href="https://wwf.panda.org/?13796/The-History-of-Whaling-and-the-International-Whaling-Commission-IWC">hunting and killing</a> whales and overfishing their food sources, or our polluting the oceans and destroying their habitats, whales remain highly vulnerable.</p>
<p>This could make for profoundly depressing reading. Instead, Fathoms is optimistic. We can address over-fishing, stop polluting the seas and start working seriously on <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-countries-end-overfishing-and-plastic-pollution-in-just-10-years-151389">restorative remediation</a>. </p>
<p>This message is especially important in a year in which <a href="https://theconversation.com/5-big-environment-stories-you-probably-missed-while-youve-been-watching-coronavirus-135364">concern for the environment</a> has fallen behind the issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>Fathoms calls for a new “Save the Whales” campaign. Public activism has <a href="https://theconversation.com/iceland-didnt-hunt-any-whales-in-2019-and-public-appetite-for-whale-meat-is-fading-127504">stopped most</a> whaling and we can rise to this new challenge, in the process also safeguarding countless numbers of no less important sea creatures.</p>
<p><em>–Donna Lee Brien</em></p>
<h2>Revenge: Murder in Three Parts by S. L. Lim</h2>
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<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54286526-revenge-murder-in-three-parts">Revenge: Murder in Three Parts</a> has a vortex-like rhythm, with its gut-wrenching tale about the cost of fortitude and self-sufficiency.</p>
<p>If you break between sittings, you are likely to dream in the way narrative wires us to dream: circling standalone memories that never stand alone in the mind’s eye, turning time inside out.</p>
<p>Yannie lives in Malaysia, her life largely devoted to caring for her parents. </p>
<p>Despite her intellectual feats, which exceed her brother’s exponentially, her parents tell her they can’t afford to send her to university. They have agreed to provide additional support for Yannie’s brother to undertake further study. He, too, betrays Yannie.</p>
<p>The reader falls for Yannie, wanting to know and unknow her in the way we want to unknow all of those things we know innately and immediately yet incompletely. </p>
<p>Yannie is highly emotionally intelligent, artistic and thoughtful. Her everyday practice is self-denial. The word “entropy” emerges literally and metaphorically throughout the novel. Lim invites us to consider the ramifications of the slow seep of unused energy, the cost of duty and sacrifice, deep inequity, unrequited longing. </p>
<p>Revenge is an unflinching investigation of how a life cultivates a mind. Lim pushes us to consider the enduring and sometimes devastating impact of missed moments and our thinking upon them.</p>
<p>Books that do not end, and will never end, leave us with questions. At the heart of this book is the following question: “What does it take, to see and not see […] at the same time?”</p>
<p><em>–Julia Prendergast</em></p>
<h2>The Animals in that Country by Laura Jean McKay</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52527550-the-animals-in-that-country">The Animals in that Country</a> is that rare thing: an intellectually ambitious, formally innovative Australian novel that is accessible to a broad readership. It’s also wonderfully macabre.</p>
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<p>The central character is Jean, a mature-aged alcoholic working her way up at a remote wildlife park. She used to clean the dunnies, now she drives the little tourist train. </p>
<p>Jean’s ambition is to become a ranger, but anyone can see she’s incapable of completing the required certificate. Her boss changes the subject whenever it comes up.</p>
<p>Jean has one sober day per week: it’s a massive effort, but it’s a service in aid of maintaining her primary human relationship with her six-year-old granddaughter, Kimberly. </p>
<p>Kimberly and Jean love animals. They work tirelessly together on a scrapbook filled with plans for their own animal park. The relationship between these two is precious, refreshingly full and beautifully rendered by McKay: cementing Jean, despite all her faults, as a heroine with true heart.</p>
<p>I was surprised at how bloody funny this book is. The first 50 pages move a little slowly, and at times the Aussie vernacular is too over-cooked, even for comic effect, but once Jean hits the road in pursuit of Kimberly, who has been stolen by her mother’s ex, the narrative takes a sophisticated turn and the book’s extraordinary, slightly surreal central project, takes off. Down the highway, we’re in the realm of horror.</p>
<p>This is a work of fiction utterly capable of swaying the cultural imaginary. </p>
<p>McKay completed this novel as part of a creative writing PhD at the University of Melbourne, and it is a testament to the quality of writing coming out of Australia’s higher-degree writing programs: well-researched, impeccably crafted, and, above all, intelligent. </p>
<p><em>–Julienne van Loon</em></p>
<h2>Witness by Louise Milligan</h2>
<p>Sexual assault and murder carry high maximum sentences for good reason. They cause damage, havoc and lifelong pain and can rip society apart. None of us want perpetrators to stay hidden and unjudged. We want the criminal justice system to do its work. </p>
<p>And so, when victims of sexual assault envy murder victims “because they don’t have to relive being killed, over and over”, when what finally breaks them is not the crime but what happens next, we all have a stake in making justice work better.</p>
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<p>In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55809574-witness">Witness</a>, Louise Milligan asks where is the balance to be struck between the rights of defendants and the rights of witnesses – and of complainants in particular. </p>
<p>Can we presume an accused person to be innocent – as she agrees we should – without irreparably damaging the lives of those who report sexual crimes and give evidence? </p>
<p>Milligan has the credentials: court reporter; investigative journalist; witness in the trial of Cardinal George Pell; and the victim of the crime committed by an invisible stranger who repeatedly threatened to kill her.</p>
<p>Milligan has clearly earned the trust not only of victims, but also of judges and senior barristers who speak candidly about the impact of vicarious trauma on them and their colleagues, and who know they are working in an imperfect system. </p>
<p>She writes about the “cognitive dissonance” required for a barrister to be able to belittle a child witness, ultimately proved to be telling the truth about sexual abuse, and then go home to their own children.</p>
<p>Witness is a harrowing read. Not because Milligan has sensationalised the experiences described to her: the court transcripts speak for themselves. But because she exposes the damage done, not only to complainants, but to everyone involved in the criminal justice system, and makes it our concern. </p>
<p><em>-Julia Prendergast</em></p>
<h2>Stone Sky Gold Mountain by Mirandi Riwoe</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48917267-stone-sky-gold-mountain">Stone Sky Gold Mountain</a> is a bellwether novel, acknowledging Australia’s racist colonial history, suggesting that settlers from many countries were complicit in the worst outrages against Indigenous people, and underlining centuries of attack and control of women by men.</p>
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<p>Set in 1877 in Queensland’s <a href="https://www.hemamaps.com/cape-york/tracks/palmer-river-goldfields">Palmer River goldfields</a> the novel imagines a gap in Australian history, bringing to the foreground young working women, shackled by class, gender and race, seeking freedom and tenderness in a violent shanty town. </p>
<p>The story begins with the exiled Lai Yue and his sister Ying questing for gold to free their siblings, sold into slavery to pay their father’s gambling debts; and with the grieving and myopic Meriem, a single mother keeping house for a whore. </p>
<p>Ying dresses as a boy to survive. Meriem and her employer Sophie ply traditional women’s trades – housekeeping and sex work – and the three defend each other.</p>
<p>We fear for Lai Yue, burdened with filial duty, paying the price of men’s brutality to each other. Chinese speculators outnumber Europeans yet remain vulnerable to racism, their homeland criminal gangs, known as tongs, and starvation. Is Ying’s brother enlivened only by conscience, or is his inner voice darker, more unsettling than that? Who is responsible when an explosion of frontier violence subsumes him? </p>
<p>Taken deep into each character’s consciousness, we absorb their trauma and resilience.</p>
<p>The bush and riverscape seethe with heat and humidity. Riwoe’s language is assured, lyric and lush with vivid imagery of transplanted Chinese culture.</p>
<p>Historical detail is always immediate and visceral. As befits a good crime novel, each chapter cranks up tension, escalates action, and coded objects – a green ribbon tied around a tree, blackbirds, snakes’ eyes and sour plums, talismanic wood carvings – lead readers towards inevitable climaxes. </p>
<p>Ghosts and opium memes bring foreboding. How does one tell white men apart when they all look the same? Ever ironic, Riwoe. Read in two sittings. Twice.</p>
<p><em>–Gay Lynch</em></p>
<hr>
<p><em>The 2021 Stella Prize winner will be <a href="https://thestellaprize.com.au/">announced online</a> at 7pm AEST tonight, April 22.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158782/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our experts cast their eyes over this list of contemporary fiction, historical fiction, and non-fiction which undertakes impressive trapeze acts across genre boundaries.Julia Prendergast, Senior Lecturer, Writing and Literature, Swinburne University of TechnologyCatherine McKinnon, Discipline Leader—English and Creative Writing, University of WollongongDonna Lee Brien, Emeritus Professor, Creative Industries, CQUniversity AustraliaGay Lynch, Adjunct academic in Creative Writing and English, Flinders UniversityJulienne van Loon, Associate Professor, Writing and Publishing, School of Media & Communication, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1252322019-10-23T19:05:04Z2019-10-23T19:05:04ZBruny review: Heather Rose’s new book has a sense of place yet taps into global unease<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298229/original/file-20191023-149608-1ybdraz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=48%2C48%2C5246%2C2287&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scandal strikes a Tasmanian construction project in the novel Bruny. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/view-bruny-island-beach-tasmania-australia-753694582?src=xwRb4QHty_C796I3QVrECQ-1-1">www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When in 2017 Nordstrom began selling <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/26/nordstrom-is-selling-jeans-caked-in-fake-dirt-for-hundreds-of-dollars/">US$425 jeans</a> (A$620) covered in fake mud, it seemed the long prophesied “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/late-capitalism/524943/">late stage capitalism</a>” had finally arrived. Suddenly the phrase itself was everywhere from <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/">Reddit</a> to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/latestagecapitalism?lang=en">Twitter</a> and applied to every freakish story about excessive consumption or corporate perfidy. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, meanwhile, US President Donald Trump expressed an interest in <a href="https://theconversation.com/greenland-isnt-denmarks-to-sell-some-essential-reading-for-trump-on-colonialism-122193">buying Greenland</a>, blithely ignoring national feeling in Denmark and the local attachment of the Inuit inhabitants. It seems to many we are living in a period in which national and cultural meanings are being drained by the inanities and indignities of an economic system that regards humans as units of production and consumption and nothing more.</p>
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<p>Heather Rose’s <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/fiction/Bruny-Heather-Rose-9781760875169">Bruny</a> takes up this sense that national boundaries and local attachments can be dissolved by the relentless power of capital. Bruny is a departure from Rose’s previous work, The Museum of Modern Love, for which she won the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-18/book-inspired-by-marina-abramovic-takes-out-2017-stella-prize/8450568">Stella Prize</a> in 2017. </p>
<p>The compelling protagonist of Bruny is New York-based UN mediator Astrid (Ace) Coleman. She is cynical, efficient and covertly working for a state intelligence organisation. </p>
<p>A Tasmanian by birth, she escaped at the first opportunity from an island she found provincial and suffocating. But when one of the supports of the nearly completed bridge to Bruny island is blown up, she returns to manage the tensions between construction workers and anti-bridge protestors.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/exquisite-prose-with-rare-and-subtle-insight-76320">Exquisite prose, with rare and subtle insight</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Bruny is a family drama. Rather improbably, Astrid’s brother, known as JC, is the Premier of Tasmania, while her sister Max is leader of the opposition Labor party. Their mother is a difficult person facing serious illness and their father can only speak in Shakespearean phrases after a series of strokes. To his credit, the quotes are invariably relevant.</p>
<p>In the novel, the Tasmanian government has a network of commercial-in-confidence agreements that defy transparency. When part of a $2 billion bridge being built to connect mainland Tasmania with picturesque Bruny Island is destroyed, it is quickly agreed that hundreds of Chinese workers will be imported to complete it by the target date. But who has blown it up and why? </p>
<p>China is the source of capital for construction and has plans for Tasmania. Large scale population removal is one of the key features of European colonisation – see <a href="https://www.qld.gov.au/atsi/cultural-awareness-heritage-arts/community-histories/community-histories-n-p/community-histories-palm-island">Palm Island</a>. Australia’s repressed history returns uncannily in novels of invasion published as early as <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/11793252?q&versionId=45530650">1877</a>, however, the xenophobia that energised these works is discharged carefully in Bruny through some sympathetic Chinese who have opted to settle in Tasmania and understand the attractions of its isolation and space.</p>
<p>Bruny’s central premise (which continues this literary invasion theme) contains a revelation that once would have been clearly absurd, threatening the realism a political thriller requires.</p>
<p>Readers might choose to consider this dramatic revelation as satirical. The novel mixes family drama, political intrigue and geopolitical speculation in ways that seem exaggerated and improbable. Yet elements are not so far removed from possibility, leaving a feeling of unease reminiscent of Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel about American fascism, It Can’t Happen Here.</p>
<p>There are a few flaws in the novel. As potential satire, it does not have to draw complex secondary characters, but insofar as it is a family drama the failure to do so weakens the effect. Perhaps this is an unavoidable outcome of the hybrid genre, but one might feel the politically powerful siblings, JC and Max, are not developed beyond caricature.</p>
<p>And there are a few elements in the writing that grate. Characters are repeatedly described by their likeness to actors – including Christopher Pike, Gene Hackman, and Chris Hemsworth. </p>
<p>Elsewhere Monty Python is misquoted. The epithet shouted at the Popular Front of Judea in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/">Life of Brian</a> is “splitter” not “quitter”. It is a minor point but distracting. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298231/original/file-20191023-149574-18xbu35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298231/original/file-20191023-149574-18xbu35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298231/original/file-20191023-149574-18xbu35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298231/original/file-20191023-149574-18xbu35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298231/original/file-20191023-149574-18xbu35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298231/original/file-20191023-149574-18xbu35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298231/original/file-20191023-149574-18xbu35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298231/original/file-20191023-149574-18xbu35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Rose uses a localised setting to speak to broader societal unease.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/770012464?size=huge_jpg">www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p>Structurally, the pacing is quite slow until the pivotal revelation and then things move quickly – perhaps too quickly. The treacherous or weak federal politicians fade from the scene and Tasmanian quislings are punished by losing office – a benign punishment given the scale of their betrayal. However, there are balancing pleasures, such as seeing the quick and intuitive intelligence of Ace at work and the loving descriptions of the landscape.</p>
<p>It is not giving away too much to say the heroes in the novel are the intelligence agencies, functioning as the last defence of liberal democracy. One only has to read opinion sites to realise the final, desperate hope of some in the centre-left of politics is that certain agencies may <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/opinion/silicon-valley-regulation.html">intervene</a> to maintain the stability of the geopolitical order.</p>
<p>Bruny captures this sense of everything being up for sale. The novel portrays a political class working at the behest of capital and ambition. The novel catalogues contemporary concerns: the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/26/world/asia/united-states-china-conflict.html">power of China</a>, the ability of capital to erode beliefs and cultures, the repression of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-19/queensland-dangerous-devices-laws-targeting-protest-movement/11617422">protest</a> and the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-17/high-court-decision-property-developer-spence-challenge/11020604">complicity</a> of local politicians with international interests.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Ryan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stella Prize winner Heather Rose’s new novel Bruny catalogues modern geopolitical concerns in a work that crosses satirical, political and family drama genres.Simon Ryan, Associate Professor (Literature), Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1151202019-04-09T10:05:15Z2019-04-09T10:05:15ZVicki Laveau-Harvie’s remarkable, uncomfortable memoir wins the 2019 Stella Prize<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268288/original/file-20190409-2898-1qz7m7b.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=134%2C0%2C942%2C949&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vicki Laveau-Harvie has won the 2019 Stella Prize for her memoir The Erratics. With rare honesty, the book shatters expectations of what a mother should be.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stella Prize</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s memoir of a “monstrous” mother has won the 2019 Stella Prize.
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38715167-the-erratics?from_search=true">The Erratics</a> tells the story of Vicki’s return home to a prairie house in the sparse wintry landscapes of Alberta, Canada, where she grew up. Once there, the narrator faces family relationships that are strained to the point of breaking.</p>
<p>This is Laveau-Harvie’s debut work – making her the second first-time writer to win in the prize’s seven year history. The book’s road to the Stella Prize is an impressive one: first released by a now-defunct independent publisher, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/08/a-dream-out-of-print-memoir-shortlisted-for-2019-stella-prize">it was reissued by a major publishing house, after being longlisted for the Prize</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s debut memoir explores family relationships on the edge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stella Prize</span></span>
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<p>When the book begins, its narrator has been absent from her family for 18 years. Her mother is clearly unwell, and Vicki believes she should be declared legally “incompetent” against her wishes. </p>
<p>Vicki is convinced that her mother is attempting to kill her father, by starving him to death. Her father defers to his wife, often against all reason, and indeed safety.</p>
<p>This book shatters social expectations that a mother is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-caring, by setting them against the bleak reality of what one mother is. It explodes culturally sanctioned ideas about what a mother ought to be, feel and do. It does so with a rare – often dark, and deeply unsettling – honesty.</p>
<p>The writing style is taut, elegant and clinically restrained. The narrator is almost numb.</p>
<p>The judges said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Set against the bitter cold of a Canadian winter, Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s The Erratics mines the psychological damage wrought on a nuclear family by a monstrous personality. Despite the dark subject matter, this book has a smile at its core, and Laveau-Harvie shows constant wit when depicting some harrowing times.</p>
</blockquote>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/six-books-that-shock-delve-deeply-and-destroy-pieties-your-guide-to-the-2019-stella-prize-shortlist-114829">Six books that shock, delve deeply and destroy pieties: your guide to the 2019 Stella Prize shortlist</a>
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<p>There are many uneasy truths in this book. It’s occasionally difficult to feel empathy for the narrator, with her myriad blind spots, and the way her desires too often lead her to fashion the world according to her own needs – seen in her failure to understand the psychiatrist’s serious hesitation to commit her mother to a locked ward unless she is genuinely a threat to herself or to others. In her too easy belief that her father’s carer is a “gold-digger”. And in the many judgments that are delivered down the telephone line from half a world away, after she returns to Sydney.</p>
<p>“I would very much like to mean ‘we’, my sister and me,” she writes about the question of who will be caring for her aged parents. “But I’m leaving, my sanity always dependent on living somewhere remote […] My sister and her partner will shoulder almost all of what needs doing.”</p>
<p>There is grief, though, when news breaks that her mother’s medical team have decided she requires constant care in a mental health ward. Vicki writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think of everything my mother will never see again, the view over the foothills to the Rockies from the windows of her house, the animals in the duck light, fawns gambolling unsteadily, coyotes pausing to give you the slightest of nods before loping across the lawns […]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And yet, it is difficult reading to the end: grief expressed from faraway Sydney feels disparaging of her caregiving sister’s nervously exhausted relief at, in the narrator’s words, the “wicked witch being dead”. </p>
<p>This is a remarkable book. It is also a deeply uncomfortable one. And that – I suspect – is precisely the point. Where the rest of us would rather deal in easy platitudes, this book is deeply honest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115120/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Debut memoir The Erratics possesses a rare honesty, exploding socially sanctioned ideas about mothers and families.Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1148292019-04-07T19:53:16Z2019-04-07T19:53:16ZSix books that shock, delve deeply and destroy pieties: your guide to the 2019 Stella Prize shortlist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267499/original/file-20190404-131404-16pnsat.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C0%2C1473%2C734&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This year's Stella Prize shortlist is difficult to sum up or pin down - but the experiences of young people are a recurring theme.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stella Prize/The Conversation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Young people – how they think and feel, how institutions (families, schools, clinics, courts) fail them – are a recurring theme in the books shortlisted for the 2019 Stella Prize.</p>
<p>These six surprising books – four novels, a memoir and a collection of essays – cover subject matter as diverse as grief, loss, history, childhood, and Indigenous resistance. They make risky aesthetic choices. Some feature dazzling experiments with language, structure and form. Despite, or, more likely, because of this, they also have a tight grip on reality.</p>
<p>They are searing and often searching; intent on excavating the “present’s beating heart”. They share an attitude that is daring, sometimes darkly funny, always serious and thoroughly unsentimental. These books are difficult to sum up or pin down. Here is our critical guide to them.</p>
<h2>Little Gods, Jenny Ackland</h2>
<p>Olive May Lovelock is blessed with the sunny kind of optimism that is typical of an Australian childhood, set against the broad flats of the Mallee. She saves a joey, and tames a raven named Grace. She checks the warm wombs of roadkill for babies. Olive wears an old pair of binoculars around her neck to “see things better”, but life proves deceptive.</p>
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<p>There are secrets here. A mother who rarely hugs or pays attention to her daughter, an unmarried sister whose baby is taken away at birth, an uncle who loses his pregnant wife in a car accident.</p>
<p>When Olive finds out she had a baby sister who died – a secret that “everyone knows”, as the local school bully tells her, but nobody is allowed to tell – she is determined to find out what happened. Olive pieces together the answers out of fragments of her own memory, and those of the children around her. But memories are deceptive, “[they] get you where they want you, not the other way around”. The answers prove dark in a way that is breathless, soul-crushing and peculiarly Australian.</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Bridge, Enza Gandolfo</h2>
<p>In October 1970, Melbourne’s Westgate Bridge – a “nation building project” that ought to have been a symbol of the brave, bold modern city – collapsed in Australia’s worst industrial accident, leaving 35 workers dead.</p>
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<p>The opening pages of Gandolfo’s book conjure the physical terror of that moment, “[…] the men were falling, falling off, falling through the air”, she writes, “bashed by the flying debris; their arms reached for the sides of the girder, for something, but there was nothing”.</p>
<p>In Gandolfo’s imagining, the Westgate Bridge becomes the site of another horror 40 years later. Jo and her best friend, Ashleigh, a granddaughter of one of the Westgate survivors, are on the verge of finishing high school, flush with the future, when their lives are shattered by a car crash – senseless, alcohol-fuelled.</p>
<p>This novel, set among migrant communities in Yarraville in Melbourne’s west, explores how accidents of this magnitude not only waste the lives of those who die, but continue to haunt the living, who must struggle for a lifetime with the weight of trauma. This is a book about guilt, ambiguity and moral culpability. It searches amid half-made lives, misguided dreams and murky realities, asking stern questions about responsibility and remorse.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Pink Mountain on Locus Island, Jamie Marina Lau</h2>
<p>Lau’s debut novel is a head trip of a book, filled with the shards of broken sentences. Written in short chapters, it embraces a contemporary reality that veers wildly between boredom and violence, mediated through retro technologies, including grainy VHS videos, and YouTube tutorials. It is sometimes hard to tell what is real and what is believable – whether there is, as Lau writes, any difference between “a false-alarm scream and a death-scream”.</p>
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<p>But the book is always emotionally true to the chaotic inner life of its young protagonist, 15-year old Monk, whose world hovers between childhood and adulthood, English and Cantonese, familial neglect and a desperate desire to be noticed.</p>
<p>At one stage, Monk’s father asks, “Would you look away if somebody was forcing you to look at their emotions?” Lau doesn’t give us the chance. She makes sure we look, straight-on.</p>
<p>Monk’s mother is absent in Shanghai, her artist father is addicted to Xanax and alcohol, and she is infatuated with a “messiah” figure named Santa Coy, who ignites all their lives – pulling Monk into a dangerous world of drugs, pushers and parties. Lau’s book captures the voice of its teenage protagonist and a new kind of transcultural millennial life in the digital age.</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Erratics, Vicki Laveau-Harvie</h2>
<p>Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s memoir tells the story of an estranged daughter’s journey home, when she is summoned to care for a mother with a fractured hip. Vicki’s mother suffers from some kind of undiagnosed mental illness, which has caused her to isolate herself and her husband from the world on their rural property, set in an eerie landscape in a remote region of Alberta, Canada. Vicki’s father suffers from dementia, and Vicki and her sister are convinced their mother has been slowly starving him to death.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267475/original/file-20190404-160927-1coph5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267475/original/file-20190404-160927-1coph5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267475/original/file-20190404-160927-1coph5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267475/original/file-20190404-160927-1coph5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267475/original/file-20190404-160927-1coph5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267475/original/file-20190404-160927-1coph5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267475/original/file-20190404-160927-1coph5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267475/original/file-20190404-160927-1coph5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Vicki’s mother is clearly unwell, and probably has been for their entire lives. She also possesses extraordinary powers of persuasion, convincing doctors, nurses and, at times, her own ailing husband that she has no daughters, or only one daughter who is dead, or only two daughters who have both disappeared. </p>
<p>Says Vicki: “I have a vision of my mother’s influence making its way through my father’s mind, filling the tiny spaces left by the rounded contours of his brain, solidifying around the synapses until not even his thoughts are his own.”</p>
<p>There are hints here of childhood trauma – reasons for leaving, reasons for not caring, or even trying to care. Vicki’s sister has long ago changed her name because “hearing her childhood name cast her back into the black chasms of before”. </p>
<p>The prose style is numb, clinically distant. It is sometimes difficult to empathise with the detached narrator and the care she cannot – or will not – show. But this is a startling memoir of family damage. We can only guess, “where there is nothing, there must have been pain”.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Too Much Lip, Melissa Lucashenko</h2>
<p>Kerry Salter enters the pages of Too Much Lip on a stolen Harley Davidson Softail, “a dozen blue eyeballs popping fair outta their moogle heads at the sight of her”, with Kerry – “blackfella du jour” – barely resisting the “urge to elevate both middle fingers as she rode past”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267476/original/file-20190404-160939-zpn031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267476/original/file-20190404-160939-zpn031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267476/original/file-20190404-160939-zpn031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267476/original/file-20190404-160939-zpn031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267476/original/file-20190404-160939-zpn031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267476/original/file-20190404-160939-zpn031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267476/original/file-20190404-160939-zpn031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267476/original/file-20190404-160939-zpn031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>She has come to say goodbye to her grandfather, Pop Owen, and to say hello to a mother who spends way too much time “on the turps”. This is a book about colonial violence, contemporary state-sponsored violence, diffuse racism, and their relationship to domestic violence, searing child abuse, family dysfunction and intergenerational trauma.</p>
<p>Kerry and her siblings cope in different ways, mostly thorough crime, alcohol and “too much lip”. But when the local mayor, a shady real estate agent whose grandfather terrorised Indigenous people, wants to build a prison on land that has spiritual, cultural and personal significance to Kerry’s family, they pull together and fight to save their river. Resistance for the Salters is less about the Native Title Act, and more about missing sister Donna’s commercial know-how.</p>
<p>Lucashenko’s book is shot through with defiance and anger; present day thefts are offset by the memory of historical ones. Hers is a darkly funny, searingly violent world, in which there are no easy fixes – only hard, complicated truths.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Axiomatic, Maria Tumarkin</h2>
<p>To say that Maria Tumarkin’s essay collection scrutinises our ideas about “History” and the past is inadequate. This book rips into our pieties, interrogates our easy platitudes, and forces us to see the world – words, things, people, feelings – in new ways. History is exactly the right subject for Tumarkin, because there is no easy forgetting in the world she describes, just as there is seemingly no limit to “how much sorrow and pain about the world a person can carry inside”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267477/original/file-20190404-160954-1lb1en6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267477/original/file-20190404-160954-1lb1en6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267477/original/file-20190404-160954-1lb1en6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267477/original/file-20190404-160954-1lb1en6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267477/original/file-20190404-160954-1lb1en6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267477/original/file-20190404-160954-1lb1en6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1193&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267477/original/file-20190404-160954-1lb1en6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1193&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267477/original/file-20190404-160954-1lb1en6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1193&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Each essay in the collection takes an axiom about history and tests it against our gritty present day realities. In “History Repeats Itself”, Vanya, a community lawyer, helps young people on a collision course with the criminal justice system “who live their lives on a highway where they are repeatedly hit by passing trucks”. In “Those Who Forget the Past Are Condemned to Re – ”, a child flees a stepfather’s violence only to be returned to a house of blood and broken teeth. </p>
<p>Her essay “Time Heals All Wounds” is a harrowing examination of teenage suicide. One boy writes in a suicide note: “Please do not assume you know why. Even I’m not completely sure.” </p>
<p>Facing all this would not be possible without Tumarkin’s sonorous wisdom; her capacity to turn things, words, people, sentences over on the page to see what they’re made of. Lucid and grave; this book is a revelation.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The winner of the 2019 Stella prize will be announced in Melbourne on April 9.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114829/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The six books shortlisted for this year’s Stella prize cover diverse subject matter and make risky aesthetic choices; they are serious and thoroughly unsentimental.Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/956452018-05-03T20:23:03Z2018-05-03T20:23:03ZFriday essay: the remarkable, prize-winning rise of our small publishers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217451/original/file-20180503-138586-fsnmax.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Four of the six shortlisted books for the 2018 Stella Prize were from smaller presses, as was the winner, Alexis Wright's Tracker. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stella Prize</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been a big 12 months for Australian small publishers, who have swept what are arguably the three most important national literary awards. Sydney press Giramondo published Alexis Wright’s biography <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36474107-tracker">Tracker</a>, winner of the 2018 Stella Prize; Melbourne’s Black Inc. published Ryan O’Neill’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29848070-their-brilliant-careers?from_search=true">Their Brilliant Careers</a>, which won the 2017 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction; and Josephine Wilson’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31338918-extinctions?from_search=true">Extinctions</a> (University of Western Australia Publishing) won the 2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217201/original/file-20180502-153888-s3a40s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217201/original/file-20180502-153888-s3a40s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217201/original/file-20180502-153888-s3a40s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217201/original/file-20180502-153888-s3a40s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217201/original/file-20180502-153888-s3a40s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217201/original/file-20180502-153888-s3a40s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217201/original/file-20180502-153888-s3a40s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexis Wright’s Tracker is published by Giramondo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://giramondopublishing.com/product/tracker/">Giramondo</a></span>
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<p>Another work from a small publisher, A. S. Patric’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24887441-black-rock-white-city?from_search=true">Black Rock White City</a> (Transit Lounge) also won the Miles Franklin in 2016. Small publishers have dominated these awards’ shortlists as well, comprising 80% of the shortlisted titles for the last Miles Franklin and Prime Minister’s awards and 66% of the shortlisted titles for the last Stella. </p>
<p>This is a significant reversal: these awards have historically been dominated by large publishers. Since 2000, for example, only 21% of shortlisted titles for the Miles Franklin have been published by small publishers.</p>
<p>There are dozens of important and respected Australian literary prizes, which help to solidify authors’ reputations and subsidise their writing (this is not an exaggeration; as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40983830?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Bernard Lahire has demonstrated</a> through sociological surveys in France even most “successful” authors draw the majority of their income through other, and often unrelated, work).</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217195/original/file-20180502-153895-1nni1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217195/original/file-20180502-153895-1nni1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217195/original/file-20180502-153895-1nni1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217195/original/file-20180502-153895-1nni1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217195/original/file-20180502-153895-1nni1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217195/original/file-20180502-153895-1nni1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217195/original/file-20180502-153895-1nni1zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The first edition of Monkey Grip, originally published by McPhee-Gribble in 1977.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24235370">Wikipedia</a></span>
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<p>But these three awards — the <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/">Stella</a>, the <a href="https://www.perpetual.com.au/milesfranklin">Miles Franklin</a>, and the <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/pm-literary-awards">Prime Minister’s</a> — are particularly important because they have broader recognition among the media and the reading public. These three prizes not only increase authors’ and publishers’ status within the literary field but also tend to increase book sales. This is particularly important for smaller publishers, where one successful book can cross-subsidise the publication of many others.</p>
<p>Small publishers have a long history in Australia, and have played a culturally important role. Many of Australia’s most famous contemporary writers started out at small publishers. Peter Carey’s early books were all published by University of Queensland Press. Helen Garner’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/634141.Monkey_Grip">Monkey Grip</a> (1977) was published by the influential small publisher McPhee-Gribble, which launched the careers of many other notable writers before being wholly acquired by Penguin in 1989. While large multinationals dominated much of the market for Australian literary fiction in the 1980s and 1990s, small publishers started to become particularly important in Australian literature again in the 2000s.</p>
<h2>Retreat of the large publishers</h2>
<p>There are many reasons why larger publishers have moved away from literary publishing, as Mark Davis discussed in his 2006 essay <a href="https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/34733">The Decline of the Literary Paradigm in Australian Publishing</a>. As Davis argued, the big drivers of this change were increased competition and the rise of data-based decision making among publishers. With the appearance of book data provider <a href="http://www.nielsenbookscan.com.au/controller.php?page=108">Nielsen BookScan</a> in Australia, publishers suddenly had good and fast data on what kinds of titles were selling and which weren’t.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217404/original/file-20180503-153891-nqj6n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217404/original/file-20180503-153891-nqj6n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217404/original/file-20180503-153891-nqj6n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217404/original/file-20180503-153891-nqj6n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217404/original/file-20180503-153891-nqj6n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217404/original/file-20180503-153891-nqj6n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217404/original/file-20180503-153891-nqj6n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217404/original/file-20180503-153891-nqj6n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Larger publishers are increasingly chasing bestselling titles, rather than investing in literary works.</span>
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<p>Moreover, the rise of literary blockbusters in the 1990s, including series such as Harry Potter and, more recently, Twilight, has had a huge impact on the way publishers do their business. Blockbuster titles are worth an inordinate amount of the market. For example, Fifty Shades of Grey, at one point, <a href="http://ew.com/article/2015/06/22/el-james-grey-book-sales/">sold one million copies in four days</a>; a novel in Australia is usually considered successful if it sells 6,000 copies in total. </p>
<p>Not only do blockbusters sell in greater numbers, but the marginal costs associated with manufacturing books decrease as more are sold. For these reasons, large publishers have increasingly chased bestselling titles, rather than investing in literary works. The latter, although culturally important, rarely become blockbusters, unless they have won a major award or been adapted into a successful film or television series.</p>
<p>The retreat of large publishers from literary publishing is particularly visible in their virtually non-existent investments in low-selling but culturally significant forms, such as short stories or poetry. While large publishers occasionally publish high-profile collections of short stories, like Nam Le’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2599523-the-boat?from_search=true">The Boat</a> (Penguin, 2007) or Maxine Beneba Clarke’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20616379-foreign-soil?from_search=true">Foreign Soil</a> (Hachette, 2014), they rarely bring out more than one or two such collections per year. Large publishers have basically no investment whatsoever in contemporary poetry publishing. Australian poetry, in particular, is kept in circulation by a handful of small publishers, such as Giramondo, Cordite, UWA Publishing, Five Islands, and Puncher & Wattmann.</p>
<p>Large publishers’ withdrawal from these areas of literary publishing has also left space for smaller ones to flourish. On the one hand, it has meant that a number of well-known Australian writers have decided to publish their later works with smaller publishers. J.M. Coetzee, Helen Garner, and Murray Bail, for instance, publish their books with Text in Melbourne. Gerald Murnane and Brian Castro publish with Sydney-based Giramondo, while Amanda Lohrey has published her last several books with Black Inc.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217396/original/file-20180503-153908-1745n8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217396/original/file-20180503-153908-1745n8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217396/original/file-20180503-153908-1745n8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217396/original/file-20180503-153908-1745n8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217396/original/file-20180503-153908-1745n8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217396/original/file-20180503-153908-1745n8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217396/original/file-20180503-153908-1745n8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217396/original/file-20180503-153908-1745n8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Rights to The Town, published by Brow Books, have been sold to Faber & Faber in Britain and Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the US among other publishers.</span>
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<p>On the other hand, small publishers have also been very good at identifying new and unique voices. Steven Amsterdam’s first novel, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6348441-things-we-didn-t-see-coming?from_search=true">Things We Didn’t See Coming</a> (2009), was published by the (now-defunct) Melbourne small publisher Sleepers Publishing, and went on to win the (also defunct) Age Book of the Year award. More recently, the Melbourne-based literary journal The Lifted Brow has entered into book publishing, and had great success in <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/shaun-prescott-living-on-the-town/news-story/6259fc3b222af5a132c393d0aab57068">selling overseas rights to Shaun Prescott’s The Town </a>(2017). It has just published a new work, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39892820-axiomatic?from_search=true">Axiomatic</a>, by the lauded author Maria Tumarkin.</p>
<p>Small publishers have become so important within Australia that, <a href="http://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2016/03/18/small-publishers-and-the-emerging-network-of-australian-literary-prosumption/">as I have argued elsewhere</a>, they now publish the majority of Australian fiction and probably have done so for about a decade. Despite their significance, they have not had particularly great success with major awards like the Miles Franklin and Prime Minister’s until quite recently. But these trends appear to be changing. </p>
<h2>Crunching the numbers on major prizes</h2>
<p>The chart below shows a strong upward trend for small publishers over the past two years in relation to titles shortlisted for the Miles Franklin. While the historical average since 2000 was only 21% of shortlisted titles coming from small presses, this jumped to 40% in 2016 and 80% in 2017. This is a particularly dramatic spike, and I would be surprised if small presses continued to dominate at this rate, but there are good reasons to believe that the general trend is real.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217420/original/file-20180503-153873-1t5p1dl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217420/original/file-20180503-153873-1t5p1dl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217420/original/file-20180503-153873-1t5p1dl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217420/original/file-20180503-153873-1t5p1dl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217420/original/file-20180503-153873-1t5p1dl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217420/original/file-20180503-153873-1t5p1dl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217420/original/file-20180503-153873-1t5p1dl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Indeed, the shortlisting data from the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction shows a nearly identical trajectory to the Miles Franklin data over the last two years, as the chart below illustrates. Like the Miles Franklin, this award saw a jump in shortlisted small press titles in 2016 (40%) and 2017 (80%). In 2017, in fact, both awards shortlisted the same four small press titles: Josephine Wilson’s Extinctions (UWA Publishing), Ryan O’Neill’s Their Brilliant Careers (Black Inc.), Mark O’Flynn’s The Last Days of Ava Langdon (University of Queensland Press), and Phillip Salom’s Waiting (Puncher & Wattmann).</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217421/original/file-20180503-153873-sn3nm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217421/original/file-20180503-153873-sn3nm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217421/original/file-20180503-153873-sn3nm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217421/original/file-20180503-153873-sn3nm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217421/original/file-20180503-153873-sn3nm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217421/original/file-20180503-153873-sn3nm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217421/original/file-20180503-153873-sn3nm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>On the one hand, this suggests an enormous shift in the way that the Prime Minister’s award values small publishers; on the other, the unusual — and even bizarre — correlation between the shortlists of the Miles Franklin and the Prime Minister’s awards suggest that this particular instance of small press dominance may be to some degree anomalous. Regardless, the trends are clear, and are also supported by data I have collected on longlisted titles for the latter two awards, which match the trends in the shortlist data.</p>
<p>The Stella Prize longlists and shortlists have also recognised small publishers, as you can see in the chart below. Moreover, despite a lower result for small presses in the Stella’s inaugural year (33% in 2013), at least half of its shortlisted titles have been produced by small publishers in every year since. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217422/original/file-20180503-153869-hs0px6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217422/original/file-20180503-153869-hs0px6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217422/original/file-20180503-153869-hs0px6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217422/original/file-20180503-153869-hs0px6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217422/original/file-20180503-153869-hs0px6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217422/original/file-20180503-153869-hs0px6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217422/original/file-20180503-153869-hs0px6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Small publishers comprise a slim majority of Stella Prize shortlisted titles, with 19 of the 36 shortlisted works (53%) coming from them. Similarly, three of the six winning titles have been produced by small publishers (Text, Giramondo, and Affirm Press). In other words, the Stella Prize has recognised small presses at effectively double the rate of both the Miles Franklin and the Prime Minister’s awards. The dominance of small publishers in the Stella is also replicated in the longlists, with 40 of 72 titles (55%) being produced by small publishers.</p>
<h2>Small publisher acceptance</h2>
<p>There are material reasons why the Stella Prize has probably been more open to small publishers. Co-founder and former executive director Aviva Tuffield is a highly regarded editor, who has worked at small publishers such as Scribe, Affirm, and Black Inc. Current General Manager (and original Prize Manager) Megan Quinlan previously worked at Text Publishing and The Monthly (which has the same ownership as Black Inc.) Many of the Stella Prize judges past and present, such as Tony Birch and Julie Koh, have published their fiction solely through small publishers.</p>
<p>It is also not coincidental that a prize championing women’s writing and gender equity would recognise small publishers. Indeed, these publishers, as <a href="https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2016/11/16/81085/is-female-leadership-in-publishing-impeded-by-motherhood/">Sarah Couper has demonstrated</a>, have a significantly higher proportion of women in executive roles than large publishers do.</p>
<p>I suspect, too, that small publishers are probably more inclusive both in terms of the authors they publish and the kinds of views and perspectives they present. In this sense, the dominance of small publishers’ titles in the Stella is unsurprising given that it is an award that seeks to champion diversity as well as literary quality.</p>
<p>The Stella’s tendency to recognise small publishers has probably influenced the other prizes to do the same. The routine appearance of such works on the Stella lists has normalised the recognition of small press books by prestigious prizes and thus made it more acceptable for other such prizes to do so. While it’s unlikely that small presses will continue to dominate the major prizes at this rate, I nonetheless suspect that they will continue to be taken much more seriously by such awards than they have been in the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95645/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emmett Stinson receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Discovery Project, "New tastemakers and Australia's post-digital literary culture" (2017-19). </span></em></p>As major publishers chase bestselling books, small ones are leading the way in publishing Australian literary fiction. And of late, they have been sweeping our major literary awards.Emmett Stinson, Lecturer in Writing and Literature, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/949062018-04-12T10:02:17Z2018-04-12T10:02:17ZAlexis Wright wins 2018 Stella Prize for Tracker, an epic feat of Aboriginal storytelling<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214440/original/file-20180412-554-l2gah8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alexis Wright, author of Tracker: a book written in the mode and genre of Aboriginal storytelling.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stella Prize</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alexis Wright’s book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36474107-tracker">Tracker: Stories of Tracker Tilmouth</a> has won the <a href="https://theconversation.com/provocative-political-speculative-your-guide-to-the-2018-stella-shortlist-94662">2018 Stella Prize</a>. Tracker is, in Wright’s words, an attempt to tell an “impossible story”, using the voices of many people to reflect on the life of Tilmouth, a central and visionary figure in Aboriginal politics. </p>
<p>At one telling point in the book, Gulf of Carpentaria activist and political leader Murandoo Yanner relates an encounter between Tracker and Jenny Macklin, then Minister for Indigenous Affairs in the Rudd government. Tracker was helping Yanner to lobby Macklin over the Wild Rivers legislation in Queensland. </p>
<p>Notoriously, Macklin had persisted with the Howard government’s “Northern Territory Intervention”, and was regarded with suspicion by most Aboriginal leaders. Nevertheless, she was the federal minister and had to be dealt with. </p>
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<span class="caption">Tracker by Alexis Wright, from Giramondo.</span>
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<p>As they approached, Tracker called out, “How ya going, Genocide Jenny?” </p>
<p>Yanner recalls the atmosphere that followed: “You could have heard a pin drop and pistols drawn at twenty paces, and the whole thing went sour pretty quickly”.</p>
<p>It tells you a lot about the man. He had regular access to the corridors of power yet still called a spade a spade. He was capable of dealing with politicians of any background and station yet did not forfeit his never-back-down attitude. </p>
<p>He was able to gain the upper hand from the first with an irreverent comment. And, above all, he was a funny bugger. (Another memorable thumbnail character sketch, this one related by Tracker himself, is of current senator Pat Dodson as a “mobile wailing wall”: a place where white people go to confess and forgo their sins.)</p>
<p>It also tells you a lot about Wright’s epic tribute to Tracker. We do not read Wright quoting Yanner, but hear the whole yarn directly from the source. Born in 1954, Tracker was one of the stolen generation. His life spanned the latter years of the White Australia policy, when Aboriginal people were still legally part of the nation’s fauna, to the tumultuous period in Aboriginal politics following the Intervention, until his death in 2015. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/provocative-political-speculative-your-guide-to-the-2018-stella-shortlist-94662">Provocative, political, speculative: your guide to the 2018 Stella shortlist</a>
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<p>This is not a book about Tracker’s life authored by Wright, but consists of stories and recollections told to Wright by the man himself as well as 50 others, from family and school mates, to Aboriginal and non-Indigenous leaders in our time. Wright brilliantly intersperses and weaves these together into an epic of stories and storytelling.</p>
<p>As the tributes to Tracker have flowed in the months since its publication, and many will surely follow as it garners further prizes and draws in ever more readers, so have proliferated the attempts to describe both the work’s genre and the mode of authorship it enacts. </p>
<p>In their award statement, the Stella judges call it a “biography”, but also “new way of writing memoir”. These descriptors capture aspects of the book – a birth to death tale does emerge from Wright’s layering of stories, and these are, of course, conjured from memory – but they also obscure. </p>
<p>Wright didn’t “write” the work but elicited the stories that comprise it through conversation. Towards the end of the book there is an unbroken sequence of nearly 100 pages of Tracker and Wright conversing, the contents of which are largely a mixture of philosophy and political economy. In these pages, Tracker’s voice is mostly serious, even earnest, as he expounds on the need to create a sustainable economic basis on which Aboriginal people can palpably enjoy their hard-won land rights and native title.</p>
<p>While it is no doubt true that readers accustomed to biographies in the European tradition will be struck by the novelty of reading a tribute to a storyman made up of many stories, Tracker’s strengths as a work are are not dependent on this putative departure from the biographical genre. It is simply remarkable to hear Tracker’s genuinely funny jokes and stories told repeatedly, often word for word and channelling Tracker’s unmistakable style, by such a range of different speakers. Over the course of the book, the repetition of these stories consolidates them and imprints them on the memory. </p>
<p>It is fitting that a book written in the mode and genre of Aboriginal storytelling should win a prize that encompasses both non-fiction and fiction. It is a work, epic in scope and size, that will ensure that a legend of Central Australian politics is preserved in myth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94906/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Ben Etherington is currently collaborating with Alexis Wright on the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Other Worlds: Forms of World Literature.</span></em></p>Tracker Tilmouth was a central and visionary figure in Aboriginal politics. His life is captured in Alexis Wright’s Tracker through the voices of many, rather than the tradition of European biography.Ben Etherington, Senior lecturer, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/946622018-04-10T19:59:36Z2018-04-10T19:59:36ZProvocative, political, speculative: your guide to the 2018 Stella shortlist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213993/original/file-20180410-114080-1gdqwdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">None of the books on the Stella shortlist offer a comforting vision of contemporary Australian life.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Six years ago, The Stella Prize burst onto the Australian literary scene with an air of urgency. The A$50,000 award was the progeny of the <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/the-count/the-stella-count/">Stella Count</a> – a campaign highlighting the under-representation of women authors in book reviews and awards lists. In the years since, the prize has challenged the gendered ways in which we think about “significance” and “seriousness” in literature. </p>
<p>Judging a literary award is invariably a contest of aesthetics and politics. And the Stella has never shied from difficult, taxing or surprising choices. It has awarded nonfiction in a field traditionally dominated by fiction; first time writers rather than established names; and in an increasingly commercialised and globalising literary marketplace, it has consistently championed the work of small and independent publishers.</p>
<p>There is, nonetheless, something distinctive about a Stella book. It often draws attention to the pressing social issues of our times – not only gender bias, but also racial prejudice and social and economic inequality - and testifies to the enduring significance of more intimate human themes: sickness and death, grief, love or family. The one quality the books share, I suspect, is that of provocation. </p>
<p>A Stella winner is a book that challenges its readers; it attempts to do a bit of work in the world. And this year’s Stella shortlist doesn’t disappoint. </p>
<h2>The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar,</h2>
<p>Azar’s novel narrates the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution through the eyes of a 13-year-old girl, Bahar, who is burnt to death two days before the revolution reaches its height. Militants “boiling” with “hatred and fervour” break into her family home, pour kerosene across the tables, and set them alight, crying “God is great, God is great!”</p>
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<p>Bahar narrates the story as a ghostly presence at the centre of her once happy family. The mass slaughter of dissidents, the execution of her brother, the rape and murder of her sister; such events are rendered as unremarkably as her sister’s transformation into a mermaid and her mother’s attainment of enlightenment in the greengage tree. </p>
<p>It is a convention of magic realism that the narrator remains estranged and distant, withholding any kind of explanation, even as ordinary life is invaded by elements of terror that are too strange to believe. This is an uneasy tension – holding beauty and horror together in a single sentence. The effect, in this novel, is to suggest that no conventional means exists to render such realities explicable.</p>
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<h2>The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser</h2>
<p>To read a book by Michelle de Kretser is to fall in love with the novel all over again. There are few ironists so scathing and few stylists so astonishing that they can demolish a character’s pretensions in a few deft strokes. Her latest work maps the gaucheries of Australian literary, intellectual and academic life. Here, the appearance of virtue is more important than its actuality. BioBags and free-range eggs are no less status objects than designer dresses and the right shade of red lipstick.</p>
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<p>The novel opens with the character of George Meshaw, the author of many “abstract but oppressive” books (one of which is ominously titled Necessary Suffering). George soon exits right, clearing the stage for a plethora of equally self-involved people, all of whom dutifully cart around his books, largely unread. Linking their stories is George’s undergraduate student Pippa Elkinson. “I love English,” Pippa gushes at one point. “In that case, I suggest you learn to write it,” replies George. </p>
<p>Pippa is all confidence and fakery. She travels abroad to gather experiences for her writing, which she insists, without a hint of irony, is based on reality. She leaves warm, supportive comments on the Twitter accounts of her carefully cultivated friends, while her agent runs her books through a simulated audience reaction indicator to test their market value. Pippa is all surface, though she later turns out to have surprising depths. As the narrator dryly observes, “Pippa would always need to demonstrate her solidarity with the oppressed – Indigenous people or battery hens, it scarcely mattered.”</p>
<p>Narcissism of all kinds is the target of this novelist’s ire. But de Kretser works her magic less through the classic tool of empathy – the recognition that other people are also human beings with feelings – than the shock of seeing our own little lives through the perspective of someone else’s.</p>
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<h2>Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman</h2>
<p>Coleman’s debut novel uses the tools of speculative fiction to gain fresh insights into the history of Indigenous dispossession. It opens with Jacky Jerramungup, an Indigenous boy stolen at an early age to be used as cheap rural labour, fleeing across the country – evading capture at a mission run by sadistic nuns, eluding the Troopers and native police sent by a murderous colonial administrator to hunt him down.</p>
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<p>Each chapter opens with a fragment from the archives of colonial bureaucracy, which appears convincingly real, but is Coleman’s invention. This is not the only strange or unexpected thing in her work. Half way through the book, what feels like a novelistic landscape drawn from the moral cesspit of the 19th century turns out to be the scene of some future invasion – a feverish figment of a dystopic dreamtime at the end of the present century. </p>
<p>This speculative terror – an invasion of spaceships bearing aliens from other planets in search of moisture – draws attention to the other, more familiar history of invasion, which is ongoing. As one character observes, “This has happened before, the English believed they had exterminated all of the Tasmanian Aborigines, the Palawa, in fact they survived the invasion, they still exist now.”</p>
<hr>
<h2>An Uncertain Grace by Krissy Kneen</h2>
<p>Kneen’s adventures in speculative erotica are invariably amusing and playful, but also strangely sad, if not overtly sentimental. In a series of interlinked stories spanning a century from the near present to a post-human future, Kneen explores questions of sex, science and gender at a time in which the boundaries between humanity and machinery are beginning to dissolve. In a complex feat of speculative world building, the novel leaps forward in stages to catch a glimpse of a post-apocalyptic future in which sea levels have risen, water has flooded the cities, and jellyfish inhabit our cellars and basements.</p>
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<p>Along the way, we meet an array of odd characters: Caspar, a middle-aged academic who climbs into a virtual skin suit to inhabit the point of view of the young female student he seduced and then discarded; Cameron, a teenage sex-robot built to aid studies in <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/hebephilia">hebephilia</a> who begins to have thoughts and feelings of his own; Ronnie, a child sex offender, whose mind fuses with a school of jellyfish. </p>
<p>Behind all this, the central – if submerged – controlling presence in the novel is Liv, a writer working at the interface of technology and narrative. Liv is 129 years old at the book’s end, seeking to find out what it means to be a human living in a post-human world.</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Fish Girl by Mirandi Riwoe</h2>
<p>Riwoe writes against the grain of W. Somerset Maugham’s classic short story “The Four Dutchmen” – a tale about a “Malay girl” brought on board a Dutch tramp ship, plying its lucrative trade in the waters off Indonesia. Upsetting the balance of homosocial shipboard life, the “Malay trollop” is casually slaughtered and thrown into the sea.</p>
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<p>The desire to rework the subjectivities of colonial characters – giving them air and life – is a marked cultural tendency of our time, a product of this century’s interest in reclaiming the voices of the oppressed and marginalised. Many of these stories, like Jean Rhys’s postcolonial classic The Wide Sargasso Sea, centre on reclaiming the voices of women. And yet, there is a kind of horror in the experience of inhabiting the point of view of characters who are so obviously destined for tragedy.</p>
<p>Riwoe gives the “Malay girl” a name – Mina – together with a set of hopes, dreams and aspirations, but Mina’s choices are narrow, and her trajectory through the world is marked by a terrifying lack of agency. The perfumed air, the gorgeous food, the tropical vegetation, do nothing to alleviate the suffocating sadness. The “Malay girl” is traded by her father, and ultimately discarded as “bad rubbish”. Riwoe takes advantage of the novella form to deliver an ending that is brutal, sharp and lingering.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Tracker by Alexis Wright</h2>
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<p>Wright’s non-fiction study of the Indigenous activist Tracker Tilmouth is not written in Wright’s own words, but the words of others. It is, as the author points out, an attempt to capture the life of a man who communicated constantly, gave his ideas away freely, but never wrote anything down. Tracker, the “constantly travelling traditional song man”, is remembered by others “through the stories they kept telling about him”, and about his “ideas and dreams”. This is the way in which he touched lives and built communities.</p>
<p>Tracker is not an easy book. It is, as Wright states, an “impossible book”. It seeks to capture “the rare thing that does not want to be caught” – and perhaps cannot be caught. It is a book that needs to be read aloud in order to be experienced. It attempts to contain all the aspects of language and story that are left out when words get set down in patterns of black ink on a page.</p>
<hr>
<p>None of the books on the Stella shortlist offer a comforting vision of contemporary Australian life. And yet language illuminates, where ordinary life is dark and hazy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94662/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A Stella winner is a book that challenges its readers; it attempts to do a bit of work in the world. And this year’s shortlist doesn’t disappoint.Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor of Writing, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/761482017-04-17T19:54:55Z2017-04-17T19:54:55ZUnflinching, luminous, and moving, the Stella shortlist will get under your skin<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165033/original/image-20170412-25901-1uo9qo5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shortlisted Stella authors, clockwise from top left: Cory Taylor, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Catherine de Saint Phalle, Heather Rose, Emily Maguire and Georgia Blain.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stella Prize/The Conversation </span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are certain books that have the knack of getting under your skin. This is why George Bernard Shaw declared Charles Dickens’ <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31250.Little_Dorrit">Little Dorrit</a> to be a far more “seditious” text than Karl Marx’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/238953.Das_Kapital?from_search=true">Das Capital</a>.</p>
<p>What he was getting at is the power of books to work on your emotions. The intellect can be too cold an instrument to engender empathy, to bring people who are distant from you into your “circle of concern”. And it is precisely this, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues, that matters for the pursuit of social justice.</p>
<p>In 2017, the Stella Prize judges have again come up with a shortlist of books that will engage your brain, but also your heart. They illuminate all the aspects of life that make us frail and vulnerable – sickness, dying, inequality – realities that many of us would prefer to ignore.</p>
<p>Two of the remarkable writers shortlisted, Cory Taylor and Georgia Blain, have died since the publication of their work: Blain of brain cancer; Taylor of melanoma-related cancer. And yet their books – alongside all those on this list – fasten our attention on the means to live better, more ethically, and with greater generosity. It is in the smallest things, in embracing everyday joys and sorrows, that we can learn to live large.</p>
<p>These are books that matter because they show us how to live in desperate times.
Let me draw them to your attention, one by one.</p>
<h2>Georgia Blain, Between a Wolf and a Dog</h2>
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<p>Hilary is a 70-year-old filmmaker, dying of cancer, determined to choose the moment and manner of her death. She has not told her daughters, Ester and April, about her illness or her plans. Ester is the mother of young twins, a family therapist whose consulting rooms contain a world of pain – “post-natal depression, school aversion, relationship crisis, death, and loneliness”. Ester is estranged from her sister April, a once famous singer who never realised her potential, and from her one time husband, Lawrence, who has lied and cheated in his work.</p>
<p>The action unfolds in the space of a single rainy day - ending in the mauve light of dusk, “between a wolf and a dog”, a place filled with ambiguity and irresolution. Here, like Hilary’s last film - a “seemingly random scatter of images” - the characters find “narrative order”.</p>
<p>Blain is a quietly profound writer with an astonishing eye for the ways in which human beings hurt and heal one another. This, her final novel, addresses the significant questions of life, “what to keep, what to discard, what clings despite all efforts to dispel it, and what slides away”. It is modern, unflinching, and unsentimental.</p>
<h2>Maxine Beneba Clarke, The Hate Race</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Maxine is brown.
Maxine has brown skin.
Maxine has funny curly hair.
Maxine thinks her family comes from England.
Maxine has dark brown skin.</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>There is an utterly transfixing, yet deeply disturbing moment in this memoir in which the young Maxine, growing up in suburban, middle-class Australia, believes that she is turning white.</p>
<p>In a realist, not magic realist work, the fervently desired “miracle … quietly brewing” on her skin, turns out to be a rare skin condition, diagnosed after a trip to the dermatologist’s office. What the poignant humour of the memoir conceals is the extraordinary violence of a society that would cause a child to want this transformation.</p>
<p>Clarke’s story charts the experience of everyday racism, tracing the lives of her British-Caribbean parents on their journey to a better life. This ideal life is turned upside down by shredded school books, abusive notes left in bags and pencil cases, and the hapless ineffectuality of teachers and school administrators.</p>
<p>Positive experiences seem few and far between: her friend Jennifer’s kind words written in her album, or the high school teacher who had the foresight to advise Maxine that the things she’d been told in primary school were as “bizarre as I’d suspected”. It takes courage to speak out again and again on issues that many of us would prefer to think did not exist. The book soars above its subject matter, demonstrating humanity in the face of the inhuman.</p>
<h2>Emily Maguire, An Isolated Incident</h2>
<p>Emily Maguire’s novel centres on the sexual assault and murder of a young woman in a tough-talking, truck-stop town midway between Sydney and Melbourne. It is in the form of a thriller, but the author is perhaps less interested in seeking out the murderer than studying the town’s reaction. </p>
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<p>Chris Rogers, the victim’s sister, is an astonishing character, reeling from the breakdown of her relationship to the love of her life; the death of her mother, and the murder of her sister. Chris struggles with men, alcohol and society’s obsession with cleavage. Then there is May Norman, a city-based journalist who arrives in Strathdee to cover the murder, and who, like Chris, is no stranger to the sexual double standard through which women – and not men – are judged for their conduct.</p>
<p>This novel tackles the insidious idea that rape is “never simple” but a “murky and confusing” situation in which the “lines of consent” are “blurred”. Maguire has a keen eye for the practices that excuse, tolerate and trivialise sexual violence, and for the language of misogyny that demeans women, blaming the victim for what she wore, what she did, or where she went.</p>
<p>What starts out as a realist venture ultimately lands in the territory of the gothic. Ghosts drift over scorched landscapes, and the bodies of murdered women rise up to haunt the living. “It’s always the men,” says the local historian. “I’ve never had a female hear the scream.” The novel’s title is, of course, ironic – it turns out that the violent death it investigates is not an isolated incident at all.</p>
<h2>Heather Rose, The Museum of Modern Love</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>If everything goes to crap, it won’t be art that saves us. Art won’t matter one iota. You can’t write your way alive, or paint your way out of death.</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>Against the odds, this is exactly what Heather Rose achieves in her startlingly original and strangely beautiful novel. It is built around the 75-day performance piece by Serbian artist Marina Abramović that took place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010.</p>
<p>Rose’s novel has a crystalline structure, tracing the lives of the characters who are transformed by the artwork. At its centre is Arky Levin, an emotionally-crippled composer who is cut off from life: from his daughter Alice, a medical student, and his wife, Lydia, an architect, facing the final stages of a potentially fatal illness in a nursing home without him.</p>
<p>Arky is joined at the performance by Jane Miller, an art teacher, who is mourning the death of her husband, Karl. There is also Brittika, a student; Healayas, a journalist assigned to cover the final days of the performance, and Danica – the ghost of Marina Abramović’s mother – who drifts, unsurprisingly, through its pages.</p>
<p>The unexpected oddity of the characters and their situations, and the luminous intensity of the language, marks out a philosophical territory that will be familiar to readers of Milorad Pavić, Dubravka Ugrešić or Danilo Kiš. This is an astonishingly beautiful book. In a culture that incessantly questions the worth and relevance of art for life, the novelist mounts a defence that is all the more astonishing for being successful.</p>
<h2>Catherine de Saint Phalle, Poum and Alexandre</h2>
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<p>De Saint Phalle’s memoir is narrated through the eyes of a child who is beguiled and bewildered by her parents’ relationship, and the secret they appear to be hiding. They lead a fabled Parisian existence, always at some distance from their child. Her mother crosses herself frequently, talking incessantly about “the nuns” and what they might think. Her parenting mainly consists of reeling off long verses from The Odyssey. </p>
<p>Saint Phalle’s father regales her with tales of Napoleon, and could “convince me that Karl Marx was a practising Catholic” or “a bird that the sky is full of water”. He appears and disappears in the child’s life, for no apparent reason. A string of unknown aunts, cousins and siblings also arrive and depart unannounced, accentuating the book’s unstated sense of loss and abandonment, and the adults’ lack of awareness that a child may require a little more in the way of stability or commitment.</p>
<p>Written in soft, cloud-like prose, with a sense of elegy, this book is finally about the power of stories to conjure hope and possibility, and impart a sense of acceptance.</p>
<h2>Cory Taylor, Dying a memoir</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>My suicide note was by way of apology. ‘I’m sorry,’ I wrote. ‘Please forgive me, but if I wake up from the surgery badly impaired, unable to walk, entirely dependent on other people to care for me, I’d prefer to end my own life.</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>Cory Taylor did not finally choose to take her life. Ultimately, she feared the trauma such a death would have inflicted on other people. Suicide, she writes, remains shrouded in a sense of “mental angst, hopelessness, weakness, the lingering whiff of criminality”. </p>
<p>In short, the problem is not hers but ours. We have “lost our common rituals and common language for dying,” becoming a society that only understands death, as “a form of failure”, as Taylor’s doctors seem to do. But living longer also means dying longer, and because of this the dying “are probably lonelier now than they’ve ever been”.</p>
<p>Taylor had already seen what it meant to die “badly”, witnessing her parents’ long, drawn out deaths from dementia in a nursing home. And so the desire to choose the way you die – assisted dying – becomes a source of comfort to her and a means of facing the things that are most terrifying about death – its total randomness, and our lack of control.</p>
<p>What is truly profound about this book is that – though it ought to be harrowing – it is astonishingly easy, if not strangely uplifting, to read. In part, this is because the narrative voice is so gentle, and tightly controlled. Every scene has a radiant quality; it glows.</p>
<p>The memoir ends with a “coming into dying”, a kind of effloresce that occurs at the edge of life – “the edge of words”. Images take over: “an over-exposed home movie footage of a girl with a dog in dappled sunshine, a car speeding down the road.” And then “The jet takes off. A kookaburra sits on a branch laughing.” </p>
<p>Taylor does not speak of death so much as she shows it to us, leaving the reader with an inexpressible sense of gratitude. This is writing that matters.</p>
<p><em>The winner of the 2017 Stella Prize will be announced in Melbourne tonight.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>All six books nominated for the Stella Prize - to be announced tonight - engage the brain, and the heart. These are books that matter because they show us how to live in desperate times.Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor of Writing, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/615792016-06-24T06:09:33Z2016-06-24T06:09:33ZStella’s Girls Write Up tells kids good writing starts with having something to say<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128609/original/image-20160629-15292-1p3mv8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Clementine Ford speaking at Stella's 'Girls Write Up'</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maddie Pollard</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Clementine Ford is no stranger to speaking out. This makes her a near-perfect poster person for the Stella’s schools program and their latest project <a href="http://girlswriteup.thestellaprize.com.au/">Girls Write Up</a> – a day-long wordfest and workshop for high school students – held for the first time this week to sell-out crowds in Sydney and Melbourne.</p>
<p>It quickly became apparent that Girls Write Up is not just about teaching young women how to write, but more fundamentally about breaking down the cultural barriers to women’s writing. Women’s writing is about more than putting pen to paper. It’s about the need to cut loose from a cultural history in which, as Clementine Ford put it, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Men get to be the heroes, the victors, the creators, the inventors […] every discussion of women’s rights needs to start with an apology.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The most pressing questions of the day were less about good, bad or better writing – or even “How do I speak out when I feel shy and vulnerable?” which was repeatedly asked in a variety of ways – but about name calling, gender dilemmas, and body issues. “What do I do when people call me a boy?” or “How do you define the word pretty?” Or what do you do when you are “too tall, too big, too loud, or too freckly” to fit the model of a girl?</p>
<p>In a room full of smart and sassy women, there was no easy answer. Panellists said dealing with it becomes easier the more you do it. “It becomes something that shapes you, and adds layers,” said writer Bec Kavanaugh.</p>
<p>Ford said that speaking out is a little bit like writing. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You don’t wake up one day as an amazing writer or as a writer who never struggles with an idea. The more you practice, the more skills you develop.</p>
<p>I actually think its less about thinking how do you overcome writer’s block, or how do you come up with an idea, and more about going right back to the start – which is how do you figure out what you want to write about.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Luckily,” said Ford, “Australia’s really sexist so there’s always a lot to write about.”</p>
<p>Luckily also, the Stella plans to make Girls Write Up an annual event, with the aim of teaching high school students to use their writing to shape themselves and the world around them – to learn to use their writers voice to give expression to things that they care about, to learning to speak loudly or louder. To be, in Ford’s words, “proud attention seekers”.</p>
<p>Another thing that is heady and exciting about Girls Write Up is the recognition that the possibilities for writing have dramatically expanded. The event featured not only panels with novelists and story writers, but also panels on making zines, graphics and comics. Speakers explored different types of media writing, from radio journalism to news commentary, with a particular focus on the ways in which the Internet has opened out new spaces for writing, allowing new voices to be heard outside of the publishing mainstream.</p>
<p>Graphic writer Nicky Minus described her writer’s life as one of a “motley crew” of “dorks and brilliant artists” on the margins but whose work was coming back into the culture in a bigger way. “You no longer need permission to write and get published,” said Minus. “You can make zines, put it on the Internet on Tumblr or Instagram and if you tag it right people will look at it.”</p>
<p>“Even if you’re still in school,” said Ford, “it doesn’t mean that you don’t have the right to write to an editor even of the Age or the Sydney Morning Herald and send them your work.”</p>
<p>Often the barriers to women’s writing are not just structural and economic, but political and cultural – and some of them are internal. Why, asked panellists, do women invariably apologise before they pitch a story to an editor? How, asked panellists, do you deal with the comment boxes, which, as any writer who has ventured into online commentary knows, are alarmingly male dominated?</p>
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<span class="caption">Nakkiah Lui joined the ‘Girls Write Up’ panel, discussing the barriers facing women in writing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maddie Pollard</span></span>
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<h2>Writing as a radical act</h2>
<p>Novelist Emily Maguire, the Stella’s Sydney representative, told her audience, it was perhaps because she started working in hospitality – because “she had been schooled into the habit of making other people feel comfortable all the time” – that it had been difficult to come to terms with the fact that people could get worked up and angry about the work that she published. “Everything you write will have haters,” said Maguire. “And, what’s worse, people who are so bored they don’t even care enough to get angry.”</p>
<p>Not only is the desire to please a barrier to women’s writing, but so too is incessantly wanting to be good. One of the most crushing expectations for a writer, said novelist Kristy Eagar, is your own and everybody else’s expectation that female characters in novels should be role models for girls: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s no expectation that male characters should be role models.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ultimately, the power of role models is as cramping as the power of stereotypes. Girls can be happy or sad, angry, lazy or depressed.</p>
<p>It’s also important to have a greater variety of voices and stories. Radio producer Heidi Pett said that she started out wanting to do human rights law and ended up wanting to change the world by telling other people’s stories. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Radio ought to be about giving people their own voice. Not going in and getting their story, but giving them the tools to tell it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lucy Watson – online editor for Archer magazine – argued that it’s possible to have a very public voice, but still work in a very marginalised environment. Watson stressed the individuality of the voices in the stories that get published. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not the same story about being queer. It’s not like we’ve done the bi-sexual story this week, or the one gay story of Mardi Gras. All the stories are different.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“It’s not about ‘representation’ but asserting your voice in public space, clarified Nakkiah Lui. "I tell my editors, ‘This is my audience and its not just aboriginal women, but women of colour’. And that’s not a minority.” The editors, the panellists joked, still appeared to insist that women were apparently a minority.</p>
<p>Triple J’s Amelia Marshall spoke realistically about the news media not only being a male dominated industry but a ruthless medium, dominated by 90 second to three minute slots.</p>
<p>“There’s also the problem that women pitch stories differently to men,” added Pett. “Men are more likely to pitch stories they don’t know about. They just jump in. Women are more hesitant. Women use every couching term available in the English language, as if you are meant to constantly apologise for your existence.</p>
<p>"I think it’s important to cut the sorry words out of your emails. Unless, of course, you are honestly apologising to somebody for what you have done.”</p>
<p>Then, of course, there’s dealing with the tenor of the feedback, which often comes from a place of fear.</p>
<p>“There’s always one listener who writes in every week and says ‘die feminist cunt’,” says Marshall, brightly. “So there you go – I think – I’ve just justified my existence and my reason for being here.”</p>
<p>Clementine Ford once defined feminism as “a way of figuring out how to be a girl in the world so that it doesn’t hurt”. If this is the case, then the problem for women writers is the need to get comfortable with the idea that, as Emily Maguire put it, “someone will hate you”.</p>
<p>Writing necessarily means cultivating a voice. It means putting yourself in a particular position, asserting your identity and taking a stand. This, it turns out, was the central dilemma for almost every writer on the day. But there was also a strong and thoroughly optimistic sense that, for all the teenagers crowding the room, this meant the world would eventually have to change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61579/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Clementine Ford is no stranger to speaking out. This makes her a near-perfect poster person for the Stella’s schools program and their latest project Girls Write Up – a day-long wordfest and workshop for…Camilla Nelson, Senior Lecturer in Writing, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/406092015-04-21T15:50:10Z2015-04-21T15:50:10ZDebut novelist Emily Bitto wins the Stella Prize<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78850/original/image-20150421-9008-bz05zn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bitto has remarked on the major impact of the Stella Prize and the conversations it has encouraged about women writers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jone</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Emily Bitto has won the 2015 <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/">Stella Prize</a> for her debut novel, The Strays. The prize is now in its third year and was established to redress the way in which women writers were typically overlooked for major literary prizes such as the <a href="http://www.milesfranklin.com.au/">Miles Franklin award</a>.</p>
<p>Bitto’s novel, loosely inspired by the modernist artists at <a href="http://www.heide.com.au/about/the-heide-story/">Heide</a>, revolves around an artists’ circle in the 1930s. It is narrated by a girl named Lily who is drawn into the world of the bohemian Trentham family.</p>
<p>The judging criteria seeks to reward works that are “excellent, original and engaging”. This year’s judges’ report praised The Strays for its “ring of originality in its richly and fully imagined vision of a particular time and place in Australian social and cultural history”. The novel is also favourably likened to Ian McEwan’s Atonement and A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book in its subject matter, characterisation and mood.</p>
<p>This year the award received more than 150 fiction and non-fiction entries, which were whittled down to a shortlist of six, also including Joan London, Christine Kenneally, Sofie Laguna, Maxine Beneba Clarke and Ellen Van Neerven.
Bitto has remarked on the major impact of the Stella Prize and the conversations it has encouraged about women writers. </p>
<p>“As a female writer, I have benefited from this award before even finding myself on the longlist, and I am so grateful for its existence”.</p>
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<span class="caption">Emily Bitto’s The Strays, winner of the 2015 Stella Prize.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Affirm Press</span></span>
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<p>The idea for a dedicated women’s writing prize arose in 2011, at which point only ten women had ever won the Miles Franklin over a period of 54 years. Perhaps not without coincidence, the winners of the prize from 2012 onwards have all been women.</p>
<p>Yet efforts to increase the visibility and recognition of women’s writing still have much to achieve despite the welcome string of three consecutive winners of Australia’s most prestigious literary prize.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/the-count/the-stella-count-2013/">“Stella Count” of 2013</a> measured how books are reviewed in Australia’s major magazines and newspapers. Not only did it show a continued disparity in the percentage of reviews devoted to male and female writers, but it also revealed a major difference in the prominence afforded to reviews of books by women.</p>
<p>According to the Count, “books by male writers tended to be given larger reviews and these were generally positioned more prominently in newspapers’ review sections”. These and other factors, those who worked on the Count argue, “reinforce that perception that books by men are for everyone, while books by women are of interest only to women, and that men’s writing is more deserving of reflection, recognition and review than that of women.”</p>
<p>One of the most neglected groups of writers identified in the Count is emerging or first-time female novelists like Bitto. It is refreshing, then, that the major profiles or lead features that Bitto would most likely have been overlooked for will now be guaranteed as a result of this major award. (This group of authors is the focus of the <a href="http://www.perpetual.com.au/kibble/awards.htm">Dobbie Award</a>, which is presented to the best debut novel by an Australian women writer, and for which The Strays has also been longlisted.)</p>
<p>Increased book sales will also follow. In the week following Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize win last year, sales of The Narrow Road to the Deep North <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/23/booker-win-saves-richard-flanagan-from-life-down-the-mines">increased 32-fold</a>.</p>
<p>The deserved publicity and readership for The Strays and all of the shortlisted works for the Stella Prize is sufficient reason enough for its existence. However, chipping away at ingrained views about women’s writing as of niche appeal only for women readers is also a crucial, if difficult, aim to work towards.</p>
<p>Impressive writing like Bitto’s novel, which the judges liken to a gemstone for its polish and complexity, will be part of that transformation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40609/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Smith has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Emily Bitto has won the 2015 Stella Prize for her debut novel, The Strays. The prize is now in its third year and was established to redress the way in which women writers were typically overlooked for major literary prizesMichelle Smith, Research fellow in English Literature, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/387852015-03-13T03:58:34Z2015-03-13T03:58:34ZStella Prize 2015 shortlist highlights new literary voices<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74764/original/image-20150313-7048-1f4tjv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vincent Brassinne</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the unique rewards of a women’s literary prize is clear in the announcement of the third <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/">Stella prize</a> shortlist. The <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/the-stella-prize/2015-2/shortlist-2015">six finalists</a>, announced yesterday, include three authors who have been shortlisted based on their first major works of fiction.</p>
<p>The space afforded to women writers by the Stella continues to reveal the strength to be found in the diverse voices of Australian authors. As Kerryn Goldsworthy, chair of the judging panel <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/stella-prize-2015-shortlist-young-novelists-lead-the-field-for-the-stella-prize-for-australian-writing-by-women-20150312-141xxu.html">explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The prize has brought writers – particularly young writers – to a degree of attention they might not otherwise see.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This year acclaimed authors Helen Garner and <a href="http://www.sonyahartnett.com.au/">Sonya Hartnett</a>, who were included on the prize <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/the-stella-prize/2015-2/longlist-2015/">longlist</a>, are not among the finalists.</p>
<p>Among the debut works of fiction are Emily Bitto’s novel <a href="http://www.affirmpress.com.au/the-strays">The Strays</a>, which draws its inspiration from the history of the Heide artists’ colony in Melbourne in the 1930s. Performance poet Maxine Beneba Clarke has previously published two volumes of poetry, but <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/books/detail.page?isbn=9780733632426">Foreign Soil</a>, which imagines the lives of displaced people around the globe, is her first a short-story collection. </p>
<p>Yugambeh woman Ellen van Neerven’s genre-crossing story collection <a href="http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/book.aspx/1312/Heat%20and%20Light">Heat and Light</a> has already won the David Unaipon Award in 2013.</p>
<p>The other finalists include established author of children’s literature, Sofie Laguna. Her second novel for adults, <a href="http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781743319598">The Eye of the Sheep</a>, is narrated by a boy who likely sits on the autism spectrum as he experiences family violence. While celebrated author Joan London’s <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/joan-london/the-golden-age-9781741666441.aspx">The Golden Age</a> focuses on a young Hungarian refugee who is being rehabilitated in a convalescent home for child sufferers of polio in Perth in the 1950s.</p>
<p>The prize’s inclusion of both fiction and non-fiction works has invited debate regarding the fairness of comparing such different forms of writing, especially after the award of the 2014 prize to Clare Wright for <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-forgotten-rebels-of-eureka/">The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka</a>.</p>
<p>This year’s shortlist includes one work of non-fiction. <a href="http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/invisible-history-human-race">The Invisible History of the Human Race</a>, by Christine Kenneally, investigates how our DNA informs our social history.</p>
<p>The Stella shortlist is also heartening for its inclusion of writing published by independent Australian presses such as <a href="http://www.affirmpress.com.au/home">Affirm Press</a>, <a href="http://www.blackincbooks.com/">Black Inc</a> and <a href="http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/">University of Queensland Press</a>, alongside those of comparative giants <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com.au/">Random House</a> and <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/">Hachette</a>. </p>
<p>Like the Stella Prize itself, these smaller publishers help to bring new and overlooked authors to our collective attention.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38785/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The six finalists of the Stella Prize, announced yesterday, include three authors who have been shortlisted based on their first major works of fiction. That’s definitely something to celebrate.Michelle Smith, Research fellow in English Literature, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/313572014-09-24T04:55:43Z2014-09-24T04:55:43ZThe Stella Count is in – women authors don’t get fair treatment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59830/original/m392n75x-1411519683.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Three of the five Miles Franklin award nominees for 2013 were women - but female authors are still underrepresented in the review pages.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Honner Media, Hamilton Churton</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>So, the <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/resources/the-stella-count-2013/">Stella Count is in for 2013</a>. These are annual statistics collected by the Stella Prize that measure the number of books by women that get reviewed in major publications and the number of books by men that get such attention. </p>
<p>I wish I could say I am surprised but I’m not. As in previous years, and on a par with American Organisation <a href="http://www.vidaweb.org/the-count-2013/">VIDA’s findings for 2013</a>, this year’s Stella Count shows that books by male authors are much more likely to be reviewed than books by female authors. </p>
<p>What is most concerning about this year’s result is that two national publications, The Australian Financial Review and The Weekend Australian, have <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/resources/the-stella-count-2013/">the most gendered outcomes</a>: 85% of The Australian Financial Review’s literary reviews were of books by male writers, an increase from its results in 2011 (79%) and 2012 (80%). The Weekend Australian recorded an improvement on previous years, but still 65% of books reviewed were by male writers (compared to 70% in both 2011 and 2012). </p>
<p>This is consistent with VIDA’s findings for last year. Influential publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books and indie darlings McSweeney’s all reviewed far more work by male writers than female writers. </p>
<p>This year, The Stella Prize, which performed the count in conjunction with Books + Publishing, also examined the gender of the reviewers and <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/resources/the-stella-count-2013/">found</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Across the majority of surveyed publications, male writers generally reviewed books by men. This remained the case even when there was a far higher proportion of female reviewers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Women’s books were, of course, more likely to be reviewed by women. </p>
<p>What I found most troubling was that even if a publication was egalitarian in its reviews, the Stella arbiters noted that “books by male writers tended to be given larger reviews and these were generally positioned more prominently in newspapers’ review sections”. The Stella Count revealed that this favouritism is “particularly conspicuous in the treatment of debut or relatively unknown writers. Emerging and first-time female authors were less likely to receive lengthy profiles or lead features than their male counterparts.”</p>
<p>This is tiring stuff for female writers, editors, reviewers, publishers and literary critics. In 1971 Margaret Atwood noted that “most books in this society are written by men, and so are most reviews … likewise women tend to be reviewing books by women rather than books by men.” While some ground has been made by women getting into print, the attention-grabbing novels still tend to be those works of fiction by men. </p>
<p>When I embarked on my PhD ten years ago, I decided to read only books by women writers. My secondary and tertiary education had been saturated with literature by men. And although I prefer to read books by women writers, I still read a hefty amount of fiction, non-fiction and poetry by men. </p>
<p>Most of the women I know read male writers – we’d be crazy not to. But, as Aviva Tuffield <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/female-authors-help-broaden-mens-horizons-20140922-10k5x4.html#ixzz3E5w2c3Ul">writes</a> today, “there is much anecdotal evidence from booksellers, librarians, teachers, parents and beyond that boys and men prefer to read only books by and about males”. </p>
<p>My own experiences at high school and university have shown this to be true. Last year, Canadian author and professor at The University of Toronto, David Gilmour, sparked social media outrage when he <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/david-gilmour-books-by-women-professor-authors-_n_3991142.html">declared</a> that he was not interested in teaching fiction by women in his courses. “What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys.” </p>
<p>Excuse me, but David Gilmour comes from Canada, which has produced some of the best female novelists of this century. Is he really so myopic that he hasn’t heard of Carol Shields, Alice Munro or Margaret Atwood? </p>
<p>As Tuffield <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/female-authors-help-broaden-mens-horizons-20140922-10k5x4.html#ixzz3E5w2c3Ul">asks</a>, “How does it happen that half of the population tends to read only about themselves? And does it matter?” </p>
<p>It does matter when we as a culture suggest that the experiences of men are universal while those of women are still seen as marginal or minor. It matters because we live in a culture that continues to rate men’s artistic endeavours as more valid than women’s. It is this kind of thinking that allows us to see women through a two-dimensional lens, reinforcing the idea that women are somehow less worthy, less important, than their male counterparts. </p>
<p>Organisations such as VIDA and The Stella Prize are doing their bit to redress this balance, but it is time for men in the industry to shoulder some of the work. Those who know better should be doing better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31357/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalie Kon-yu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>So, the Stella Count is in for 2013. These are annual statistics collected by the Stella Prize that measure the number of books by women that get reviewed in major publications and the number of books…Natalie Kon-yu, Lecturer in Creative Writing, Literature and Gender Studies, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/263192014-05-05T11:03:18Z2014-05-05T11:03:18ZThe importance of women’s literary prizes<p>Time to adjust your sets. Since October last year, this column has focused on television, but “Square Eyes” has now metamorphosed into “Portable Magic”, and will discuss books, reading, and literary culture. Stephen King used the phrase “uniquely portable magic” to describe the power of books to enable us to immerse ourselves in new worlds and unfamiliar perspectives. </p>
<p>My academic research concentrates on 19th-century literature and periodicals, as well as children’s literature. I also collect Victorian-era children’s books and women’s magazines. As my use of a quotation from King suggests, I’m interested in all kinds of books, including maligned genres, as well as literary fiction. </p>
<p>In this newly directed column, I will write about historic and contemporary fiction; the culture surrounding books, including bookstores, writing festivals, and literary awards; as well as ideas about reading, especially as the printed book is being superseded by the ebook. To begin the column’s first chapter, I’d like to talk about Australia’s women’s literary award, the Stella Prize. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47821/original/y39n6gt7-1399286057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47821/original/y39n6gt7-1399286057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47821/original/y39n6gt7-1399286057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47821/original/y39n6gt7-1399286057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47821/original/y39n6gt7-1399286057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47821/original/y39n6gt7-1399286057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47821/original/y39n6gt7-1399286057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Eureka Diggers Memorial.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Fithall/Flickr</span></span>
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<p>Kate Grenville, winner of the 2001 Orange Prize, commented that “a prize for women’s writing wouldn’t be necessary in an ideal world”. In a world in which female authors are highly popular, yet are disproportionately overlooked for prestigious literary prizes, Australia’s own literary award for women, <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/">The Stella Prize</a>, was awarded for the second time last week. </p>
<p>The UK equivalent, now titled the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (yes, it’s sponsored by the liqueur), has been criticised for supposed <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3556178/The-Orange-Prize-is-a-sexist-con-trick.html">sexism</a>, including by writers A.S. Byatt and Germaine Greer. Byatt <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/20/as-byatt-intellectual-women-strange">pointed to</a> the prize’s supposed assumption that “there is a feminine subject matter”, something that she does not “believe in”.</p>
<p>Whether or not a “feminine subject matter” exists, when it comes to non-fiction, it is true that women’s stories, especially those of historical women, have been neglected.</p>
<p>There are numerous reasons for women’s absence from our historical consciousness. To begin with, we have overinvested in stories of male heroism, exploration, and bravery. Histories of women’s part in colonialism and war, for example, have been buried underneath the mass of men’s stories. </p>
<p>Only in recent decades have writers and scholars begun to ask how women contributed to the expansion and maintenance of the British Empire, nation building in the colonies, and to various war efforts, for example.</p>
<p>While women may not have always effected the same kinds of social and cultural changes as men, especially those women who were confined to domestic work, overlooking their role can only offer an incomplete reconstruction of the past.</p>
<p>Frequently women’s voices are simply not recorded in archives. Printed records, such as newspapers and government papers, do not always register their lives and contributions. Unless a woman happened to keep a diary and subsequent generations considered it important enough to preserve, there might be few traces of her existence.</p>
<p>It is into a culture where women are often elided from history that <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/clare-wright-108220/profile_bio">Clare Wright</a> devoted ten years to writing them back into <a href="https://theconversation.com/flashers-femmes-and-other-forgotten-figures-of-the-eureka-stockade-20939">the events of the Eureka Rebellion</a>. Wright received the Stella Prize for The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. The book shows that the goldfields of Ballarat in the 1850s were not solely the preserve of men and that the rebellion of workers against British colonial soldiers was not disconnected from the labour and influence of women. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ccormoc2VhA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Interview with Clare Wright.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though we might question the notion of a feminine subject matter, certainly few male writers and scholars have devoted themselves to uncovering the forgotten histories of women. If women writers, like Wright, don’t recover these stories from obscurity, then they’ll most likely remain hidden.</p>
<p>Wright’s book tells of the women who worked alongside men on the goldfields, including the extraordinary ones who were community leaders.</p>
<p>In her prize <a href="http://textpublishing.com.au/number-3-chiller/post/clare-wright-s-acceptance-speech-for-the-2014-stella-prize/#.U2c8pJ4gQHc.facebook">acceptance speech</a>, Wright describes the subjects of her history as “a bunch of noisy sheilas getting up to no good on the 19th-century frontier”. She evidently took pleasure in reading and writing about women who stepped outside restrictive social conventions. Yet Wright also places importance on the role these women played in “proclaim[ing] the people’s right to freedom and independence in a new upside-down society where merit was supposed to count for more than inheritance”.</p>
<p>Wright’s book shows that the women involved in the Eureka Rebellion were integral to political and social change. The women behind the Stella Prize are also seeking to redress inequality is a supposedly merit-based society and to ensure that the historical record of outstanding Australian literature does not similarly fail to note women’s achievements.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26319/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Time to adjust your sets. Since October last year, this column has focused on television, but “Square Eyes” has now metamorphosed into “Portable Magic”, and will discuss books, reading, and literary culture…Michelle Smith, Research Fellow, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/258722014-04-27T20:28:58Z2014-04-27T20:28:58ZWomen’s writing at the Stellas, Miles Franklin and Kibble awards<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46952/original/x8vxcs5j-1398301236.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We're into awards season – so lets look at the awards. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Coch/AAP Image</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the award season gets into swing, the number and quality of books published in 2013 show that this was another bumper year for work by Australian women. </p>
<p>The winner of the 2014 <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/">Stella Prize</a> for Australian women’s writing will be announced in Sydney tomorrow evening. Awarded for the first time in 2013, the Stella is the only major Australian literary prize to be <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/about-us/about-the-stella-prize/">funded by donations</a> rather than by the taxpayer or from bequests.</p>
<p>Inspired by frustration at the relatively low number of women who had won or even been shortlisted for the annual <a href="http://www.milesfranklin.com.au/">Miles Franklin Literary Award</a> – which has been operating since 1957 – the Stella also takes its name from <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/franklin-stella-maria-sarah-miles-6235">the author Franklin</a>. Stella was her first Christian name. Miles, her fourth, was adopted in the hope her first novel <a href="http://www.milesfranklin.com.au/whoisMF_herbooks">My Brilliant Career</a> (1901) would be read as a work by a man.</p>
<p>Ironically, 2012 was an especially strong year for Australian women’s fiction. For the first time <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/the-stella-prize/2013-2/shortlist-2013/">the 2013 shortlist</a> for the Miles Franklin was entirely made up of novels by women. Women went on to win all the major literary prizes for fiction.</p>
<p>In addition to its source of funds, the Stella is also unusual in being open to a wide range of literary genres, non-fiction as well as novels, short stories and young adult fiction. As a result, <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/the-stella-prize/2014-2/judges-2014/">the five judges</a> of this year’s award were faced with more than 160 entries.</p>
<p>Last year, the shortlist featured no non-fiction but a wide range of types of fiction, including a verse novel, a collection of stories and a young adult novel. This year <a href="http://thestellaprize.com.au/the-stella-prize/2014-2/">the judges have opted for</a> an even split between fiction and non-fiction. As well as three very distinctive and distinguished novels, there is a memoir, an innovative historical work and a detailed account of a court case about the rape of a woman by a footballer.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46953/original/b68kvjsj-1398301907.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46953/original/b68kvjsj-1398301907.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46953/original/b68kvjsj-1398301907.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46953/original/b68kvjsj-1398301907.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46953/original/b68kvjsj-1398301907.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46953/original/b68kvjsj-1398301907.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46953/original/b68kvjsj-1398301907.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46953/original/b68kvjsj-1398301907.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Three of the 2013 Miles Franklin shortlist authors (L to R), Carrie Tiffany, Romy Ash and Michelle de Kretser.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Honner Media/Hamilton Churton</span></span>
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<p>I have always believed that one can never have too many prizes, since Australian writers need all the publicity and money they can get. But for all the media attention given to the Stella, nobody seems to have realised a prize for Australian women writers had already been in existence for 20 years.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.perpetual.com.au/kibble/">Kibble Awards</a> for Australian women writers were first presented in 1994. Like the Stella, these awards cover non-fiction as well as fiction, though they have more restricted eligibility, being given to a book that can be classified as life writing.</p>
<p>Like the Miles Franklin, the Kibbles were <a href="http://www.perpetual.com.au/kibble/history.htm">established by a bequest</a>. They are named after <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/kibble-nita-bernice-6947">Nita B Kibble</a>, the first woman librarian at the State Library of NSW. The bequest was made by her niece, Nita B Dobbie, whom she had brought up. Neither woman married, and both were apparently great readers.</p>
<p>In making her bequest, Nita Dobbie seems to have been influenced by Miles Franklin’s. Franklin, who had spent time in America, seems to have been influenced in her turn by the <a href="http://www.pulitzer.org/">Pulitzer Prizes</a>. </p>
<p>While they only specify a preference for works on American themes, Franklin’s will requires that novels eligible for her award “<a href="http://www.milesfranklin.com.au/about_history">must present Australian Life in any of its phases</a>”. But she was an internationalist as well as a nationalist. The Miles Franklin is the only major Australian literary award open to writers who are not Australian citizens or permanent residents.</p>
<p>Like Franklin’s, Nita Dobbie’s will also contained a clause relating to the Australian content of eligible works. They had to deal with “normal Australian life”. It was decided, therefore, not to limit the award to fiction, but to make it a prize for “life writing”.</p>
<p>As the then Professor of Australian Literature at Sydney University, I was among the people named in the will as potential judges and so consulted when the Kibbles were being established. I was worried that if these awards were limited to fiction, they might be seen as a sort of poor woman’s Miles Franklin. Perhaps the same worry motivated those establishing the Stella to also make it a prize for non-fiction as well as fiction.</p>
<p>Unlike the Stella, the Kibble Awards do not allow entry by novels aimed at young adults. This is probably the main reason why this year we had to read only 105 books as against the Stella’s 160 plus. </p>
<p>Two of the novels shortlisted for the Stella were entered for the Kibbles but were not eligible. <a href="http://hannahkentauthor.com/">Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites</a> is set entirely in Iceland, and so was not eligible for the Miles Franklin either. <a href="http://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/going-viral/">Alexis Wright’s amazing The Swan Book</a> has been longlisted for the Franklin. But works of fantasy or speculative fiction are not eligible to be considered as life writing.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/24/night-guest-fiona-mcfarlane-review">Fiona McFarlane’s The Night Guest</a>, the Stella’s other shortlisted novel, is longlisted for the Miles Franklin, and for the Kibble’s Nita B Dobbie Award, given to a first book. Of the non-fiction works on the Stella shortlist, both <a href="http://textpublishing.com.au/books-and-authors/book/the-forgotten-rebels-of-eureka/">Clare Wright’s The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka</a> and <a href="http://kristinaolsson.net/books/boy-lost.html">Kristina Olsson’s Boy, Lost</a> are also longlisted for the Kibbles. </p>
<p>For some reason, <a href="http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/night-games">Night Games by Anna Krien</a> was not entered for the Kibbles, though it would seem to have qualified. Other books longlisted for the Kibbles include excellent collections of short stories by <a href="http://debraadelaide.com.au/">Debra Adelaide</a> and <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com.au/authors/georgia-blain.aspx">Georgia Blain</a>, as well as several novels also long-listed for the Miles Franklin. </p>
<p>Short stories, like young adult novels, are excluded from the Miles Franklin. And other strong novels and works of non-fiction have been longlisted for the Dobbie Award. The winners of the Kibble Awards will not be announced until July 23. </p>
<p>For now, we have the Stella decision to look forward to. Whoever wins, 2013 has certainly proved another very strong year for books by Australian women. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Webby is chair of the judging panel for the 2014 Nita B Kibble Literary Awards.
</span></em></p>As the award season gets into swing, the number and quality of books published in 2013 show that this was another bumper year for work by Australian women. The winner of the 2014 Stella Prize for Australian…Elizabeth Webby, Emeritus Professor of Australian Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.