The Stella Prize longlist for 2015 was announced today! The $50,000 prize is awarded for the best work of literature, fiction or non-fiction, published in 2014 by an Australian woman.

The twelve longlisted books are:

• Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke – Read our review
• The Strays by Emily Bitto – Read our review
• Only the Animals by Ceridwen Dovey – Read our review
• This House of Grief by Helen Garner – Read our review
• Golden Boys by Sonya Hartnett – Read our review
• The Invisible History of the Human Race by Christine Kenneally
• The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna – Read our review
• The Golden Age by Joan London – Read our review
• Laurinda by Alice Pung – Read our review
• Nest by Inga Simpson – Read our review
• Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven – Read our review
• In My Mother’s Hands by Biff Ward

Chair of the Stella Prize judging panel, Kerryn Goldsworthy, says of the longlist:

For the third year in a row, the longlist for the Stella Prize reveals the wealth of talent and skill across a broad spectrum of authors, genres and styles in Australian women’s writing. Of the twelve writers whose work appears on the longlist for 2015, almost half a century separates the youngest from the oldest. Some of these writers have just published their first books, while others are experienced veterans of the Australian literary scene. The list includes science writing, short stories, reportage, novels, memoir, and fiction for young adults. Some of the books focus on animals and the natural world, some on children, and some on the things that order our human lives, from the dramatic moral theatre of the law courts to the tiny complexities of DNA.

The 2015 Stella Prize shortlist will be announced at 12 noon on Thursday 12 March, and the 2015 Stella Prize will be awarded in Melbourne on the evening of Tuesday 21 April.

Previous winners for the Stella Prize include Carrie Tiffany for Mateship with Birds and Clare Wright for The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka.

Find out more (including the full judges’ report) here.