Stella is thrilled to announce award-winning writer, Alice Pung OAM, as the 2023 Stella Prize Chair of Judges.
Pung is the bestselling author of fiction, non-fiction, and children’s literature. Her first novel, Laurinda, won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and her most recent novel, One Hundred Days, was shortlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award. She was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to literature in 2022.
Pung will be joined on the judging panel by broadcaster and bibliophile, Astrid Edwards; essayist and literary critic, Beejay Silcox; Walkley Award-winning journalist, writer, and broadcaster, Jeff Sparrow; and Gomeroi poet, essayist, and legal scholar, Alison Whittaker.
Together, they will select the most original, excellent and engaging book as the winner of the 2023 Stella Prize.
Alice Pung OAM (Chair) Alice Pung OAM is an award-winning writer based in Melbourne. She is the bestselling author of the memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home, as well as the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson. Her first novel, Laurinda, won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. One Hundred Days is her most recent novel, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Alice was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to literature in 2022.
Astrid Edwards is a bibliophile. She is the host of The Garret: Writers on Writing, teaches in the Associate Degree of Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University, and occasionally writes book reviews. She is the former Chair of Melbourne Writers Festival, and until 2022 she served on the Victorian Disability Advisory Council. Astrid was a contributor to the 2021 anthology Growing Up Disabled in Australia.
Beejay Silcox is an essayist and literary critic. Her literary criticism and cultural commentary regularly appears in national arts publications, and is increasingly finding an international audience, including in the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian and The New York Times. Her award-winning short stories have been published at home and abroad, and have been selected for a number of Australian anthologies.
Jeff Sparrow is a writer, editor, broadcaster, and Walkley award-winning journalist. He is a columnist for The Guardian Australia, a former Breakfaster at Melbourne’s 3RRR, and a past editor of Overland literary journal. His most recent books are Provocations: New and Selected Writing; Crimes against Nature: Capitalism and Global Heating; Fascists Among Us: online hate and the Christchurch massacre; Trigger Warnings: political correctness and the rise of the right; and No Way But This: in search of Paul Robeson. He lectures at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne.
Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi poet, essayist and legal scholar. She is a Senior Researcher at the Jumbunna Institute. Her award-winning works include Lemons in the Chicken Wire and Blakwork, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award and received a Queensland Literary Award. Her most recent book, Fire Front, is an anthology of, and about, First Nations published poetry.
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