Women winners of the Miles Franklin since its inception in 1957 have been thin on the ground, but things are changing.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
In the past three years, Anna Funder, Michelle de Kretser and Evie Wyld have received Australia's most significant literary prize and this year seems likely to continue that trend.
Five novelists – four women – have been shortlisted for the $60,000 prize, which awards a book of the highest literary merit that deals with "Australian life in any of its phases".
The list is: Golden Boys, Sonya Hartnett; The Eye of the Sheep, Sofie Laguna; The Golden Age, Joan London; After Darkness, Christine Piper, and Tree Palace, Craig Sherborne.
Many observers are tipping either Hartnett or London to win.
Children feature prominently in several of the books.
The judges' spokesman, Richard Neville, State Library of NSW Mitchell Librarian, said the listed novels had "a rich cast of unforgettable characters, and themes ranging from childhood gangs and domestic violence to itinerant thieves, wartime internment and the post-war polio epidemic".
None of the authors has won the prize, but several are serial literary prize winners.
Harnett is a prolific writer of books for children and adults, who has previously twice been shortlisted for the Miles. She won The Age book of the year award for her first adult novel, Of a Boy, and won the world's richest prize for children's writing, the Astrid Lindgren, in 2008.
Laguna is listed for her second novel; her first, One Foot Wrong, having been longlisted for the Miles in 2012.
London's first novel, Gilgamesh, was shortlisted for the Miles in 2002. It also won The Age fiction book of the year award that year. London won The Age book of the year award in 1986 for Sister Ships, a collection of stories.
Piper's debut novel, After Darkness, last year won the Vogel prize for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under 35, and Sherborne turned to fiction after publishing two acclaimed memoirs, Hoi Polloi and Muck. His first novel, The Amateur Science of Love, won the Melbourne Prize's Best Writing Award.
The winner will be announced on June 23.
Review extracts
Golden Boys
Sonya Harnett
"At key moments in Golden Boys, people attempt to make things right by taking on punishments that might more justly be served on others. Their success or otherwise is just one of the endings driving this succinct and vivid novel . . . Golden Boys flows as easily as a bike ride on a summer afternoon."
The Eye of the Sheep
Sofie Laguna
"Laguna has vividly brought to life what it must be like to be a different child and the effect his condition can have on a family. By getting inside Jimmy's mind and showing what an amazing place it is, this book goes a long way towards explaining what a library of textbooks could not."
The Golden Age
Joan London
"The Golden Age serenely affirms the goodness in people and the divinity of the connections between . . . London writes about love and goodness but she is also conscious of the severe, at times perplexing and unwanted, responsibilities of art."
After Darkness
Christine Piper
"Piper can tell a story, and despite the feeling of impending doom that pervades from the start, After Darkness has a satisfying plot not always found in such literary works. And literary it is. Piper can write with both economy and descriptive impact."
Tree Palace
Craig Sherborne
Tree Palace is "about a group of itinerant, petty crim people in the country, and it is very different again". "It is also moving, terrifying and wonderfully well observed and, as with all the strange books Sherborne writes, a triumph."
