You have to admit, women generally do things better and with a greater generosity of spirit than men. That was certainly true of this year’s inaugural Stella Prize announcement at Melbourne’s Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. The prize, if you didn’t know, honours Australian women’s writing. Writers, publishers, agents and booksellers flocked from around the country to attend. It was a wonderful, joyous occasion, with everyone, including the shortlisted writers who didn’t win, saying how much they enjoyed it.

Shortlisted author Michelle de Kretser (Questions of Travel) confided that she hadn’t won but she didn’t care; she felt so proud and honoured. Writer Helen Garner gave a wonderful personal address (I hope it’s published somewhere) about the agony and importance of prizes for writers. The winner was Carrie Tiffany for her novel Mateship With Birds. In her gracious acceptance speech, Carrie asked her fellow shortlisted authors to join her on the podium and announced that she was returning $10 000 of her prize money to be distributed amongst the other writers. ‘It should be more,’ she said, ‘I wish it could be more, but in fact I have some heavy duty creditors at the moment and I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep this cheque secret.’ Carrie pointed out a number of coincidences – Michelle de Kretser had launched her book and shortlisted author Cate Kennedy had been one of the judges who gave her first novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, the Victorian Premier’s Award for an unpublished manuscript. She omitted one other coincidence – she has a writing studio above Stella Prize donor, Patricia O’Donnell’s restaurant, the North Fitzroy Star. O’Donnell was very excited about Carrie’s win.

Jane Palfreyman, Michelle de Kretser’s publisher at Allen & Unwin, was also at the Stella awards night. She was in Melbourne to finish the final edit on Christos Tsiolkas’ new and as yet unnamed novel. It was, she said, a masterpiece and very long: ‘All Christos’ books are long!’ The book is scheduled for October. Allen & Unwin also have a new Alex Miller novel lined up, to be launched after the Melbourne Writers Festival, and Penguin have announced a new Tim Winton novel for later in the year, Eyrie. There are also two big local titles being released in May – Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites and Andrea Goldsmith’s The Memory Trap. So it’s shaping up to be a great year for Australian fiction ahead.

Last year, the Pulitzer Prize board deemed that no American novel was worthy of winning. This year they found one, Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son, a novel set in North Korea. I haven’t read it yet but I remember one of our more prescient customers urging me to do so last year. Other winners were Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall (History), The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss (Biography), Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds (Poetry) and Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King (General Non-Fiction).

Mark Rubbo