Perpetual, the trustee of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, today announced ten authors have been included on the 2024 longlist. They will be competing for one of the most recognised literary prizes in Australia, with the winner also receiving $60,000.
Selected from 104 books, the Award celebrates novels of the highest literary merit that tell stories about Australian life.
The 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award longlist is:
|
Author |
Novel |
Publisher |
| Hossein Asgari |
Only Sound Remains |
Puncher & Wattmann |
| Jen Craig | Wall | Puncher & Wattmann |
| Lauren Aimee Curtis | Strangers at the Port | Hachette UK |
| André Dao | Anam | Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Random House) |
| Gregory Day | The Bell of the World | Transit Lounge |
| Melissa Lucashenko | Edenglassie | University of Queensland Press |
| Angela O'Keeffe | The Sitter | University of Queensland Press |
| Sanya Rushdi | Hospital | Giramondo Publishing |
| Charlotte Wood | Stone Yard Devotional | Allen & Unwin |
| Alexis Wright | Praiseworthy | Giramondo Publishing |
According to the judging panel, “The 2024 longlist engages profoundly with the historical, cultural, philosophical, artistic and environmental concerns of present-day Australia, spanning a breadth of narrative forms and literary styles. The list includes powerful stories of the legacies of colonisation and dispossession, and the strength, richness and humour of First Nation responses.
Historical novels explore hitherto untold and unexpected stories of First Nations contact with settler-colonials as well as the multinational, multicultural roots of present-day Australian society. There are elegiac explorations of the diverse historical, political, economic, environmental, and ecological drivers of immigration. Some contemporary novels engage experimentally with ekphrastic responses to international poetry, music, art and artists. Others provide insightful portraits of individual and imaginative responses to mental health and present some highly unusual, and thought-provoking, vignettes of life during the pandemic.
The tyranny of distance often ascribed to Australian literature is challenged by these novels that span generations and geo-political spaces.”
The 2024 judges are Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian of the State Library of NSW and Chair; literary scholar, A/Prof Jumana Bayeh; literary scholar and translator, Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty; book critic, Dr James Ley; and author and literary scholar, Prof Hsu-Ming Teo.
Last year, the Miles Franklin Literary Award was awarded to Shankari Chandran for her novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens (2023).