[Archive 2013-05-01] Miles Franklin Literary Award nominates only women for potential winners

Historical archive — originally published 2013-05-01. This report records what was known on that date. It is not current news; subsequent events may have changed the situation. Wikinews closed in May 2026.

Announced yesterday in Sydney, the shortlist for Australia's most prestigious literary award, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, includes only women for the first time in the award's history. The award had been criticized in the past for its exclusion of women on the short list, with no women appearing on it in 2009 and 2011.

This year's authors on the short list include Romy Ash for Floundering, Michelle de Kretser for Questions of Travel, Annah Faulkner for The Beloved, Drusilla Modjeska for The Mountain, and Carrie Tiffany for Mateship with Birds. The winner gets a cash prize of AU$60,000.

The longlist, announced in the last week of March, included two men out of ten total listed authors: Brian Castro for Street to Street, and Thomas Keneally for The Daughters of Mars.

Perceived discrimination against women's writers in Australian literary circles led to the creation this year of the Stella Prize. The chair of the Australia Council’s Literature Board Sophie Cunningham played an integral role in creating the Stella Prize, modeled after the United Kingdom's Orange Prize. The award derives its name from Miles Franklin's birth name, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin.

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