Stella Prize 2016: And the Winner Is Charlotte Wood for The Natural Way of Things

Congratulations to Charlotte Wood on winning the 2016 Stella Prize in Sydney tonight for The Natural Way of Things.

Fresh off a win for the Indie Book of the Year, The Natural Way of Things has made a huge splash in the Australian publishing world. The dark, enthrallingly told  novel of the friendship two women cultivate while trapped in a shack in the middle of nowhere has gripped readers all over the country, and love for this book is spreading.

Yolanda, Verla and the other women are held captive, desperate for answers and searching for an escape. It’s a book about power, control, misogyny and survival, and has been mentioned in the same breath as The Handmaid’s Tale and Lord of the Flies. Wood is the author of five previous novels, one non-fiction book and is also the editor ofThe Writer’s Room Interviews magazine.

Julia Zemiro, MC

The Stella is the literary award that celebrates Australian women’s writing and the $50,000 prize is named after one of Australia’s iconic female authors, Stella Maria Sarah ‘Miles’ Franklin. The Stella Prize celebrates Australian women writers’ contribution to literature and aims to bring more readers and increased sales for those writers.

You can see all the longlisted titles here. You can catch many of these authors at the Sydney Writer’s Festival this May, click here to learn more.