Last night, Waanyi author Alexis Wright made literary history, becoming the first person to win both the Miles Franklin Award and the Stella Prize (awarded for the best writing by an Australian woman) in the same year. These are two of the highest honours in the Australian literary world, each accompanied by a $60,000 prize.
With this win, the 73-year-old author becomes a two-time winner of both prizes, having picked up the Miles Franklin in 2007 for Carpentaria and the Stella for Tracker in 2018. She is the first two-time winner of the Stella in its 11-year history.
Accepting the Miles Franklin in Sydney, Wright said: “I never expect things like this. I already thought winning a Miles Franklin once was a miracle. Winning twice is monumental and unbelievable to me.”
The 2024 judges, headed by State Library of NSW Mitchell Librarian Richard Neville, had high praise for Wright’s aptly named novel Praiseworthy: “Through its sheer ambition, astringency and audacity, Praiseworthy redraws the map of Australian literature and expands the possibilities of fiction.”
A biting satire, Praiseworthy has also received critical acclaim in the US, where the New York Times described it as “the most ambitious and accomplished Australian novel of this century”, and in the UK, where it won the UK’s oldest literary award, the James Tait Black memorial prize.
The 736-page epic took 10 years to write and tells the story of a small town in Australia’s far north plagued by the arrival of a cloud of noxious haze. The story is a rich allegory and introduces readers a crazed visionary; his butterfly-obsessed wife who is trying to repatriate her Aboriginal-Chinese family to China; and their sons, one of whom is determined to commit suicide, while the other plans to pursue a dream of becoming white and powerful. The novel charts their journey as they confront what might just be the end of days.
“I do not expect the privilege of being able to write another book like this,” said Wright at the awards last night. “But who knows? Believing in the unbelievable has got me here.”
