Our favourite Stella Prize discoveries

In the seven years since it launched, the Stella Prize has exposed Australian readers to a wide variety of books through their annual longlists and shortlists – from novellas to short stories, dystopian speculative fiction to young adult novels.

In this post, our booksellers share some of their favourite books that they discovered through the Stella Prize.


An Uncertain Grace by Krissy Kneen (2018 longlist)

Krissy Kneen is such an impressively versatile writer, and I love all of her books, but I think this one is possibly my all-time favourite. An Uncertain Grace combines sex writing with science fiction, but does so with a focus on empathy and understanding. This book takes a close look at the psyche of an adolescent-appearing love robot, the process of taking consciousness out of the body and uploading it to the cloud, and what it might feel like to relive someone else’s memories. It is undoubtedly a weird book, but I think all of the best books in the world fall into that category.

– Ellen Cregan, marketing and events coordinator


Letter to George Clooney by Debra Adelaide (2014 longlist)

I have always taken the Stella Prize longlist as a recommended list of books to read, and I am delighted each year if I have already read any of the works. Equally, though, I am thrilled to discover a new author, another person’s art to admire. Reading Letter to George Clooney, Debra Adelaide’s short-story collection, blew my mind. The lead story that holds the same title as the compilation is so horrific that I have had nightmares and day terrors recalling it. I found it one of the most articulate and profound exposes of everything that is wrong with our contemporary way of living. I wish that Adelaide was heralded more for her insightfully wicked and very beautiful writing.

I have, of course, now read all her work.

– Chris Gordon, programming and events manager


The Fish Girl by Mirandi Riwoe (2018 shortlist)

When it comes to fiction, I fear I’m guilty of buying into the hierarchy that places novels and short-story collections at the top of the pyramid of attention, leaving the humble novella to fight for recognition (alongside the even more neglected novelette). So I’m grateful to the Stella Prize for bringing Mirandi Riwoe’s beautiful novella The Fish Girl to my attention last year.

I wasn’t familiar with the W. Somerset Maugham short story, The Four Dutchmen, which inspired Riwoe’s post-colonial feminist re-imagining (specifically the character who is dismissively referred to as a ‘Malay trollop’), but I didn’t have to be. The historical world Riwoe creates is so lush with carefully chosen detail and I was easily drawn into the story of Mina, an Indonesian girl whose life is changed irrevocably when she moves from a small fishing village to work in the house of a Dutch merchant. From the outset, you feel a sense of unease rumbling beneath all of Mina’s emotions as she moves from her village into this new life: her fear and reluctance, her awe at her new surroundings, her homesickness and longing for a familiar anchor to her past life.

Like Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, Riwoe creates a character whose humanity and resilience in the face of the casual cruelty of colonialism will haunt you – a remarkable achievement for a story that lasts just over 100 pages. This isn’t just a mirror to Maugham’s original, it’s a carefully crafted and tragic story in its own right, driven by dreams and desires of a wholly believable character.

– Jackie Tang, digital content coordinator


Floundering by Romy Ash (2013 longlist)

Even though I read Floundering six-ish years ago, I still remember its imagery quite vividly. Brothers Tom and Jordy are being carted up the coast by their mum, Loretta, whose attempts to get her life back together are not working. The book is told from the perspective of Tom, the younger brother. Writing adult fiction from a child’s perspective can be tricky to pull off, but I think Ash does this perfectly, capturing the sticky, suspended feeling of days spent doing not much at all in the middle of an Australian summer.

– Ellen Cregan, marketing and events coordinator


The 2019 Stella Prize winner is announced tomorrow night, 9 April. To remind yourself of this year’s shortlist, please click here.

Too see a full list of all the Stella Prize winners to date, click here.

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Cover image for An Uncertain Grace

An Uncertain Grace

Krissy Kneen

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