Mark's Say, March 2016
The 8th of March is International Women’s Day and it’s appropriate that the longlist for the UK Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced in the same month, on the 8th of March. The Bailey’s Prize was established in 1996 as The Orange Prize, and in 2001 Australian Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection won the prize, beating works by Ali Smith and Margaret Atwood. The Bailey’s Prize was one of the inspirations for the Stella Prize, the shortlist for which will be announced on the 10th of March.
The Stella Prize emerged in early 2011 out of a panel that was held at Readings Carlton on International Women’s Day. The panel was partly a discussion about the underrepresentation of women in prizes and on the literary pages of the major Australian newspapers. The Stella Prize celebrates the best book by an Australian woman, whether fiction or nonfiction, each year. It was first awarded in 2013 to Carrie Tiffany for her second novel, Mateship With Birds, then in 2014 to Clare Wright for her work of nonfiction, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, and in 2015 to Emily Bitto for her debut novel, The Strays.
I’ve been amazed at how quickly the Stella Prize has established itself as one of Australia’s major literary prizes in terms of reader interest and acceptance. At Readings, for example, we have sold over 3000 copies of The Strays, making The Stella Prize the most successful for us in generating sales. It beats our own Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. That’s no mean feat and is testament to the writers and the people behind the Stella Prize. The Stella Prize has also started a schools program to encourage the use of Australian women’s writing in schools. Worth $50,000, the Stella Prize is enough to provide a writer with some time to write and the funding largely comes from private donations, from people who feel passionate about writing and supporting women’s literature.
You can become a Stella Spark for just a $50 tax deductible donation (see here) but as Aviva Tuffield, the executive director, commented to me recently, ‘Raising funds is always a struggle. We need one big donor to give us long term security.’ So there’s a wonderful opportunity for someone to put their stamp on this exceptional prize!
Those of you who’ve been to Carlton recently may have noticed that the Esprit shop next to our Carlton bookshop is for let. You’ve probably also noticed that our Carlton shop is becoming pretty crowded as we try to fit everything in, especially in our children’s area. Children’s publishing is an area that’s growing; Australia is going through another baby boom and beautifully produced children’s books appeal to young readers (and their helpers!) in different ways to the iPad apps that are also often at their disposal. Two years ago we established The Readings Children’s Book Prize to encourage Australian writing for children, and the shortlist for this year’s prize will be announced on the 15th of March. We are committed to children’s literature as an integral part of children’s development. So when the Esprit space came up for rent our Carlton children’s buyer, Angela Crocombe, told me, in no uncertain terms, ‘That’s the place for our children’s bookshop!’ Luckily, the property owner agreed and I’m excited to announce that we’ll be opening our dedicated children’s shop in the next few months.
We’ll keep you updated as things progress. If you have any good ideas for a name, let me know. We are also opening a new shop in Westfield Doncaster in late July – so two new shops for us this year!
