Edwina Preston’s novel Bad Art Mother was rejected 25 times before it found a publisher. It has just been named one of the six titles on the shortlist for the 2023 Stella Prize, announced on Thursday morning.
Also making the cut for the prestigious women and non-binary writers award this year are: We Come With This Place by Debra Dank; big beautiful female theory by Eloise Grills; The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt; Hydra by Adriane Howell; and Indelible City by Louisa Lim. Each author receives $4000 in prize money.
Reflecting the broad nature of the prize, the list includes two works of nonfiction, a graphic memoir, one book of poetry and two novels. For the first time, all books on the shortlist are published by small or independent publishers.
Published by Jo Case at Wakefield Press, Preston’s novel revolves around poet Veda Gray and is set in Melbourne across several decades, from the 1950s on. Beautifully written, it explores art and feminism: in particular life for an artist who is a mother.
Told from two perspectives – one Veda’s, via letters to her sister, and the other, her adult son, Owen’s, the storyline is inspired in part by poet Gwen Harwood and in part by Sweeney Reed, the child of artists Albert Tucker and Joy Hester adopted by Heide founders John and Sunday Reed.
“[Harwood is] most well known as a poet but she was also a mischievous, playful character, so dynamic and full of life. Her letters are just fantastic, they spring from the page. I channelled a bit of that in finding a voice for my character,” Preston says.
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“I wanted to show the difficulties facing creative women, with or without children, with or without men in their lives, and with or without ‘difficult’ temperaments,” Preston told the Prize organisers. “There is still, I think, a sense that a ‘difficult’ woman should be punished, or at least is deserving of punishment, and this is a theme that plays out in my story.”
Being shortlisted is brilliant, says the Melbourne-based writer and musician: those many knockbacks were demoralising. “You sort of think the more rejections you get, the more armour-clad you become but I didn’t, I became more and more sensitised to the rejections.”
Edwina Preston’s novel Bad Art Mother was rejected 25 times before it found a publisher. It has just been named one of the six titles on the shortlist for the 2023 Stella Prize, announced on Thursday morning.
Also making the cut for the prestigious women and non-binary writers award this year are: We Come With This Place by Debra Dank; big beautiful female theory by Eloise Grills; The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt; Hydra by Adriane Howell; and Indelible City by Louisa Lim. Each author receives $4000 in prize money.
Reflecting the broad nature of the prize, the list includes two works of nonfiction, a graphic memoir, one book of poetry and two novels. For the first time, all books on the shortlist are published by small or independent publishers.
Published by Jo Case at Wakefield Press, Preston’s novel revolves around poet Veda Gray and is set in Melbourne across several decades, from the 1950s on. Beautifully written, it explores art and feminism: in particular life for an artist who is a mother.
Told from two perspectives – one Veda’s, via letters to her sister, and the other, her adult son, Owen’s, the storyline is inspired in part by poet Gwen Harwood and in part by Sweeney Reed, the child of artists Albert Tucker and Joy Hester adopted by Heide founders John and Sunday Reed.
“[Harwood is] most well known as a poet but she was also a mischievous, playful character, so dynamic and full of life. Her letters are just fantastic, they spring from the page. I channelled a bit of that in finding a voice for my character,” Preston says.
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“I wanted to show the difficulties facing creative women, with or without children, with or without men in their lives, and with or without ‘difficult’ temperaments,” Preston told the Prize organisers. “There is still, I think, a sense that a ‘difficult’ woman should be punished, or at least is deserving of punishment, and this is a theme that plays out in my story.”
Being shortlisted is brilliant, says the Melbourne-based writer and musician: those many knockbacks were demoralising. “You sort of think the more rejections you get, the more armour-clad you become but I didn’t, I became more and more sensitised to the rejections.”