With just hours before the Stella Prize 2018 longlist is announced, I thought I’d take a stab at what I think will appear.
Apparently the judges had to work through more than 170 entries (look at that ace pic below!). Unlike the judges, I’ve only read a handful of eligible books but I’m aware of a bunch that keep crossing my radar. On that rather flimsy basis, I’m predicting the longlist*.
01. Pulse Points by Jennifer Down – TBH, I think Down was robbed when Our Magic Hour went unnoticed on the prize front.
02. The Museum of Words by Georgia Blain – it’s beautiful (and we all know, terribly sad…).
03. The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein – extraordinary, harrowing, unforgettable.
04. See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt – not my cup of tea but I know some people are mad for it.
05. Drawing Sybylla by Odette Kelada – hard to overlook a book about Australian women writers.
06. The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser
07. From the Wreck by Jane Rawson
08. The Choke by Sofie Laguna
09. Terra Nullius by Claire Coleman – topical, relevant, unique.
10. An Uncertain Grace by Krissy Keen – it’s way, way out there but so challenging and original.
11. True Stories by Helen Garner (or something about Helen Garner – The Writing Life of Helen Garner by Bernadette Brennan)
12. Rain Birds by Harriet McKnight
There wasn’t room for the Spargo-Ryan, Valentish, Brewin, Cheng, Tan, Murphy or Abbott, all which could be there… Seriously, why are longlists so short?!
In the past, I’ve been wildly cheeky and made my winner prediction before the longlist was even announced. I’m doing the same this year – I think Sarah Krasnostein’s The Trauma Cleaner will be hard to beat.
*The longlist is made up of twelve books, usually a mix of fiction and non-fiction, memoirs and short stories (and they must have been published in 2017).