The Stella Prize, a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing, this week announced the 2014 Stella Prize longlist:

• Letter to George Clooney by Debra Adelaide
• Moving Among Strangers by Gabrielle Carey
• Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
• Night Games by Anna Krien
• Mullumbimby by Melissa Lucashenko
• The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane
• Boy, Lost by Kristina Olsson
• The Misogyny Factor by Anne Summers
• Madeleine by Helen Trinca
• The Swan Book by Alexis Wright
• The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright
• All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

The Stella Prize is named after Australian female author Stella Maria “Miles” Franklin. The prize seeks to:

• recognise and celebrate Australian women writers’ contribution to literature
• bring more readers to books by women and thus increase their sales
• provide role models for schoolgirls and emerging female writers
• reward one writer with a $50,000 prize — money that buys a writer some measure of financial independence and thus time, that most undervalued yet necessary commodity for women, to focus on their writing

In April 2013 the inaugural Stella Prize was awarded to Carrie Tiffany for her second novel, Mateship with Birds.

Details about those longlisted for the 2014 prize can be found here.