Waanyi Nation author, Alexis Wright has nabbed the prestigious Stella Prize for her novel 2023 Praiseworthy. The award, which recognises writing by Australian women, saw 12 books gunning for the $60,000 prize but ultimately, it was Alexis’ exceptional storytelling ability that saw her take home the award. Alexis also previously won the award in 2018 for her novel Tracker making her the first person to receive the Stella Prize twice.
Read on to learn more about Alexis Wright’s award-winning Praiseworthy and the other incredible nominees that made it onto the Stella Prize longlist for 2024.
01
Praiseworthy
Alexis Wright
Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy won the Stella Prize for 2024. The novel follows a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which is both an ecological catastrophe as well as the gathering of the ancestors. In the story, a ‘visionary’ seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people.
Alexis Wright’s previous novel Tracker was also on the Stella Prize longlist and won the coveted award in 2018.
02
She is the Earth
Ali Cobby Eckermann
She is the Earth is a novel by celebrated poet, Ali Cobby Eckermann. In the novel, we follow Ali in a journey through grief and celebrate the healing power of Country.
03
Feast
Emily O’Grady
Emily O’Grady’s Feast unfolds over a mere days after a family reunites in the Scottish Highlands.
“While events take place over a few brief days, the story unearths complexities, secrets, derelictions and joys that span decades and occupy the seamy continuum between good and evil, dignity and contempt, life and death,” the Stella Prize judges noted.
04
Abandon Every Hope: Essays for the Dead
Hayley Singer
Using an array of poetic, lyric, academic and reflective writing styles, Hayley Singer tackles a thanatography (an attempt to write death). Abandon Every Hope takes a gruelling (and sometimes gruesome) look at the industrial meat complex, from slaughterhouses to cannibalism and beyond.
05
The Hummingbird Effect
Kate Mildenhall
Spanning 1933 to 2181, The Hummingbird Effect ambitiously follows the lives of women through the future of capitalism and climate change.
“The Hummingbird Effect is speculative fiction at its finest: inventive, mind-expanding and wonderfully ambitious,” the Stella Prize judges noted.
06
Body Friend
Katherine Brabon
A 28-year-old woman leaves the hospital after an operation and begins swimming in a pool in Melbourne’s inner suburbs where she meets Frida, who uncannily mirrors her chronic illness struggles. She later meets another woman in the local park called Sylvia who sees her pain and encourages her to rest.
The narrator is torn between the dichotomy these two women and their opposing philosophies.
07
Edenglassie
Melissa Lukashenko
Melissa Lukashenko’s Edenglassie sees the world’s of Australia’s past and present collide, underpinned by an assessment of colonialism. In modern-day Brisbane, we follow Grannie Eddie, granddaughter and activist Winona, and Dr Johnny as they discuss the injustices of cross-cultural relations, the complex dynamics of blak community and the deep politics of Aboriginality.
“It is a storyline that centres blak perspectives and experiences in the fight for truth and identity justice, delivered with empathy and authentic characterisation,” the Stella Prize judges noted.
08
Graft
Maggie MacKellar
Maggie MacKellar’s Gaft is a gorgeously written reflection, set in Tasmania, which tackles motherhood, farming, nature and home.
09
Hospital
Sanya Rushdi
Hospital is based on real-life events. The book follows a Melbourne-based research student as she is diagnosed with her third episode of psychosis. After being shuffled from her home to hospital and places in between, she questions her perception of reality and sanity.
10
The Swift Dark Tide
Katia Ariel
What happens when, in the middle of a happy heterosexual marriage, a woman falls in love with another woman? Katia Ariel’s critically acclaimed novel The Swift Dark Tide explores this through vignettes.
11
West Girls
Laura Elizabeth Woollett
As an adolescent, Luna Lewis transformed from pudgy preteen to a beauty queen. Reinventing herself as ‘Luna Lu’, she took a ticket out of the most isolated city on earth. Now, as her once budding international modelling career quickly approaches its expiry date, Luna starts to grapple with what she’s sacrificed – and who she’s become – in her mission to transform herself.
11
The Anniversary
Stephanie Bishop
JB is a novelist whose star is on the rise. Her husband, Patrick, is an auteur film director – two decades her senior – whose star has well and truly peaked. When the couple take a cruise to reinvigorate their marriage, Patrick falls overboard to his death.
Suspicions rise when JB doesn’t seem to “grieve” correctly. Rather than weep and mourn, she flies to New York to accept a literary prize for a novel based on their relationship.
