The Miles Franklin Literary Award is one of the most prestigious prizes in the local landscape. This year’s longlist features a host of established and emerging talents.
Named after one of the pioneering voices in Australian fiction, the Miles Franklin Literary Award is one of the country’s longest-running and most prestigious book prizes.
The inaugural winner was Patrick White for Voss (in 1957). Since then, winners have included Tim Winton, Michelle de Kretser, Tara June Winch, and many more local luminaries.
This year’s longlist showcases an incredible diversity of themes and styles, with a mixture of household names and debutant authors (not to mention several Happy’s Best New Books alumni).
The longlist reads as follows:
- The Other Half of You – Michael Mohammed Ahmad
- After Story – Larissa Behrendt
- Scary Monsters – Michelle de Kretser
- Bodies of Light – Jennifer Down
- Echolalia – Briohny Doyle
- The Magpie Wing – Max Easton
- The Dogs – John Hughes
- The Airways – Jennifer Mills
- One Hundred Days – Alice Pung
- The Performance – Claire Thomas
- 7 ½ – Christos Tsiolkas
- Grimmish – Michael Winkler
We’re excited to unveil the longlist for the Miles Franklin Literary Award! Congratulations to the longlisted authors! #MilesFranklin pic.twitter.com/fOhj835gkt
— MilesFranklin (@_milesfranklin) May 23, 2022
Here’s how judging panel chair and State Library of NSW Mitchell Librarian, Richard Neville, summed up this year’s selection:
“This year’s longlist, drawn from a robust pool of entries, reflects the thematic richness and the formal adventurousness of the contemporary Australian novel, as our writers respond to our times. Diverse in every sense, it extends from works of realism to novels in a more experimental vein, proving that the nation’s story-tellers are continuing to test the boundaries of what the novel can do.”
The shortlist will be announced on June 23 and the winner on July 20.
Visit the website for all the details.
