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Congratulations to historian Clare Wright who has won the 2014 Stella Prize with The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, her second book which took ten years to research and write.

Wright Forgotten Rebels Eureka

The winner was announced tonight at a ceremony in Sydney which was MC’d by Caroline Baum and featured speeches by Aviva Tuffield, Annabel Crabb, and Chair of the 2014 Stella Prize judging panel Kerryn Goldsworthy.

Clare Wright giving her acceptance speech. Pic: Elizabeth Lhuede

Clare Wright giving her acceptance speech. Pic: Elizabeth Lhuede

There are more pics here via @TheStellaPrize

Kerryn Goldsworthy writes of the winning title:

“Traditionally represented as a key moment in the forging of Australian masculinity, the Eureka conflict and the events that led up to it are shown in this book to have involved many women as well. Far from the popular image of a wild shantytown with an all-male population, the book reveals a relatively ordered goldfields society where commerce, domestic life and even theatre all flourished. The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka is a revisionist history written not in a corrective or a combative way, but as something more positive and celebratory: Wright does not attempt to discredit existing versions of events, but rather to deepen and enrich our knowledge of Eureka and our understanding of its place in Australian history.”

You can read a review by AWW Contributing Editor Yvonne Perkins here. Challenge participant and historian, Janine Rizzetti has also reviewed Wright’s book. Recently Clare Wright shared some insights on how she wrote The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka in an interview for the Challenge.

In a gesture of generosity which is becoming synonymous with the spirit of the Stella Prize, Clare Wright will make two donations of $2500 each from her prize money — one to the Indigenous Literary Foundation and the other to Northcote High School (her local school), where an annual, Eureka Prize for Women’s History will be established.

The 2014 Stella shortlist featured three novels and three non-fiction titles:

  • Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (Picador)
  • The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane (Penguin)
  • The Swan Book by Alexis Wright (Giramondo)
  • Boy, Lost by Kristina Olsson (UQP)
  • Night Games by Anna Krien (Black Inc)
  • The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright (Text)

Hannah Kent, Burial RitesMcFarlane, The night guesttheswanbook-wright

boy-lost-olssonnight-games-krienWright Forgotten Rebels Eureka

Congratulations to all authors who were shortlisted and longlisted this year!

 

About Me

I’m a freelance book reviewer, journalist, writer and editor. I blog over at Wordsville and can be found on Twitter @PaulaGrunseit