The Stella Prize have released their first-ever longlist featuring multi-award winning authors alongside new talent.

Named after one of Australia’s most important female authors, Stella Maria Miles Franklin (1879–1954), the Stella Prize celebrates Australian women’s contribution to literature, open to both fiction and non-fiction. This year’s judges – writer and critic Kerryn Goldsworthy, author Kate Grenville, actor and creator Claudia Karvan, bookseller Fiona Stager and ABC broadcaster Rafael Epstein – have selected 12 books for the inaugural Stella Prize longlist including a ‘thankfully unafraid and resonant debut’ from Amy Espeseth, ’a big, sweeping narrative for lovers of Literature with a capital L’ from Michelle de Kretser, and many more.

Here is the Stella Prize longlist in full:

• Floundering by Romy Ash (Text Publishing)

• Mazin Grace by Dylan Coleman (UQP)

• The Burial by Courtney Collins (Allen & Unwin)

• The People Smuggler by Robin de Crespigny (Penguin/Viking)

• Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser (Allen & Unwin)

• Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth (Scribe Publications)

• The Sunlit Zone by Lisa Jacobson (5 Islands Press)

• Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy (Scribe Publications)

• Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)

• The Mind of a Thief by Patti Miller (UQP)

• An Opening by Stephanie Radok (Wakefield Press)

• Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany (Pan Macmillan/Picador)

The judges will announce the shortlist on Wednesday 20 March.

Click here to read more about the Stella Prize.