No longer pale, male and stale: your guide to the 2024 Miles Franklin shortlist
- Written by Astrid Edwards, PhD Candidate and literary critic, The University of Melbourne
Shortlists are odd things. Put two lots of judges in separate rooms with the same works and you will not come up with the same one. But it is always interesting when their choices overlap.
Two novels on this year’s Miles Franklin shortlist were also on that of this year’s Stella Prize: Sanya Rushdi’s Hospital, which explores her experience of psychosis, and Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy, a monumental epic that is also this year’s Stella winner (both published by Giramondo).
While skewing literary, this year’s Miles Franklin shortlist actively seeks new ways of understanding style, form and technique. There is an openness too: three authors are shortlisted for their debut longform works.
The Miles Franklin, while always prestigious, had earned a reputation for being male, pale and stale. But it has demonstrably evolved since the establishment of The Stella Prize in 2012. (Only one man, A.S. Patrić, has received the award since, for Black Rock White City in 2016.) The Miles Franklin shortlists of the past two years showcase the most diverse groups of writers in the prize’s history.
This shortlist is further evidence of the ongoing dominance of small publishers, who are clearly more adept – and willing – to invest in developing cultural rather than commercial capital. Giramondo, a small literary publisher that often has books represented on major shortlists, features twice. So does Puncher & Wattmann, perhaps best described as a micro-publisher, with Hossein Asgari’s Only Sound Remains and Jen Craig’s Wall.
Significantly, almost all the works on this shortlist play with the form of fiction itself. Andre Dao’s Anam (the only book published by a major publisher, Penguin Random House), Hospital, Only Sound Remains and Wall blur the lines between fiction and fact. Each, in their own way, presents versions of autofiction and fictionalised autobiography. Praiseworthy is also a deliberate and direct challenge to classification.
Anam by André Dao
Readers who follow unpublished manuscript awards have been waiting for Anam for a while. The manuscript won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2021.