MilesFranklin

Wonderful news – we have an all-female Miles Franklin shortlist for 2013 which includes three debut novelists. Miles would be so proud!

The shortlisted titles are:

  • Romy Ash – Floundering
  • Annah Faulkner – The Beloved
  • Michelle de Kretser – Questions of Travel
  • Drusilla Modjeska – The Mountain
  • Carrie Tiffany – Mateship with Birds

A link to the author bios and novel synopses can be accessed here.

Speaking on behalf of the judging panel, Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian, State Library of New South Wales said:

“The five novels in the 2013 Miles Franklin Shortlist are at a surface level all about family – the searching for their comfort, the crises when they fail, escaping their pervasive grasp, or the despair when they do not seem possible – but more deeply these books write about the intersection of people’s lives with national, indeed international, stories and ideas. Each approaches their subject from very different perspectives, but all deliver complex, engrossing narratives which persist long after the books are closed!”

Speaking on behalf of The Trust Company, which manages the estate of the late Miles Franklin and has been Trustee of the award since it was first awarded in 1957, Simon Lewis, Head of Philanthropy and Community, said:

“Congratulations to all the shortlisted authors. The shortlist demonstrates how strong Australia’s pipeline of female literary talent really is, as witnessed with last year’s Miles Franklin winner, Anna Funder, as well as by the growing number of first time female authors included in the long and shortlists in recent years. We look forward to announcing yet another outstanding Australian female literary talent on the 19 June as the 2013 Miles Franklin Award winner.”

The winner will be announced on Wednesday 19 June 2013 in Canberra at the National Library of Australia, and will receive $60,000 for the novel judged to be of the highest literary merit which “must present Australian life in any of its phases” in line with Miles Franklin’s wishes.

Each of the five shortlisted authors will also receive $5,000 in prize money from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.

So, dear AWW Challenge reviewers: please send us your reviews of the shortlisted titles. We have several reviews of Floundering by Romy Ash (that doesn’t mean we don’t want more) but we also need more reviews for the other titles so that we can post a wide range of your opinions and responses.

Thanks and happy Miles Franklin reading!

Paula

About Me

I’m a freelance book reviewer, journalist and editor and have worked as a librarian for many years. I’m always feeling guilty about what I ‘should’ have or ‘should be reading’. I blog over at Wordsville and you can find me on Twitter @PaulaGrunseit