The Stella Prize 2019 longlist announced in Sydney
February 8, 2019
The longlist for the 2019 Stella Prize, worth $50,000, was announced last Thursday in Sydney. Each of the twelve finalists receives $1,000 from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund in recognition and support of their achievement.
The longlist contains seven works of fiction and five of non-fiction – including the work of two authors who have previously received Cultural Fund support. The Copyright Agency’s 2016 Author Fellow Melissa Lucashenko was nominated for the work she developed from the Fellowship, Too Much Lip; and Fiona Wright, nominated for her collection of essays The World Was Whole, was the UTS New Writer in Residence in 2017 – funded by the Cultural Fund.
The award’s judges, author Michelle de Kretser, journalist Daniel Browning, investigative journalist Kate McClymont and Sydney Writers’ Festival head of children’s and YA programs, Amelia Lush, credited the writers for demonstrating first-rate critical thinking capabilities, tremendous imagination, and a readiness to take risks with form.
The longlisted titles and authors are:
- Little Gods, Jenny Ackland (A&U)
- Man Out of Time, Stephanie Bishop (Hachette)
- Bluebottle, Belinda Castles (A&U)
- The Bridge, Enza Gandolfo (Scribe)
- The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire, Chloe Hooper (Hamish Hamilton)
- The Death of Noah Glass, Gail Jones (Text)
- Pink Mountain on Locust Island, Jamie Marina Lau (Brow Books)
- The Erratics, Vicki Laveau-Harvie (Finch Publishing)
- Eggshell Skull, Bri Lee (A&U)
- Too Much Lip, Melissa Lucashenko (UQP)
- Axiomatic, Maria Tumarkin (Brow Books)
- The World Was Whole, Fiona Wright (Giramondo)
Copyright Agency congratulates all the authors and publishers selected for the longlist. The Stella Prize shortlist will be announced on 8 March and the winner of the prize will be announced in Melbourne on 9 April.
For more details, see the announcement as it appeared in Books + Publishing on 8 February 2019.