Novel formula for interrupted tale claims Stella Prize
The Sri Lankan-born Sydney author has been shortlisted three times, including for the very first Stella awarded in 2013, and has even judged the awards.
Now her latest work of fiction, Theory & Practice, has finally won the $60,000 prize for Australian women and non-binary writers, announced Friday at the Sydney Writers Festival.
"I thought this would be another shortlisting at best ... so it was just thrilling and incredible, and I've felt very lucky," she said ahead of the official announcement.
"Theory & Practice is an exceptional novel of hyper realism in which Michelle de Kretser, an author at the height of her powers, interrogates the messiness of life found in the gap between theory and practice," said chair of the judging panel Astrid Edwards.
Theory & Practice begins with the tale of an Australian geologist in Switzerland, but is interrupted by what appears to be the author, aged in her twenties - declaring that she no longer wants to write novels that read like novels.
The life and thoughts of this young woman take over, including her complicated relationship with literary hero Virginia Woolf - the "Woolfmother".
There are sections on the pioneering English author, including investigating her anti-Semitism, and de Kretser declares these parts are as accurate as she could make them.
But the characters and events of Theory & Practice are entirely fictitious.
Adding to the trickery, one edition of the book has a snap of de Kretser as a student on the front cover, taken in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda.
"I wanted to write this novel that would make people think, 'Is this memoir? Is this all non-fiction?' But it's not, it's actually fiction that doesn't read like fiction," she said.
Unlike her protagonist, de Kretser never studied Woolf at university, but reading about Woolf's late novel The Years, she found the English author had attempted to alternate story and essay.
Woolf eventually ditched the idea, but for de Kretser it provided the scaffolding for an innovative structure.
"The fiction, non-fiction thing didn't work for Virginia Woolf, I don't think it's going to work for me! So I will just try and do more of a mix," she said.
Theory & Practice also investigates the pervasive tension between the work that artists leave behind, and their lives and political views.
From Pablo Picasso to George Orwell, Paul Gauguin and Donald Friend, there's a long list of artists who would be cancelled - or jailed - if they were they alive today.
So how to judge our literary heroes when we discover they have feet of clay? Openness is a start, according to de Kretser.
"No one is perfect, but we acknowledge that people have done or said or written certain things that we find unacceptable, and that can be very hurtful," she said.
At least the field of potential literary heroes has widened since Woolf's era - thanks in part to her own theory and practice, and thanks also to initiatives such as the Stella Prize.
There were 180 entries for the 2025 Stella, and for the first time in the award's 13 years, the shortlist featured only women of colour.
The Stella has made a difference to the book industry broadly, said de Kretser.
"There has been much greater awareness of reviewing books by women, and greater awareness of gender issues on prize shortlists," she said.
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Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
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I missed my chance at a gap year, so instead I tried a ‘gap week' in my 40s
I've always been as besotted with the idea of living in London as I was embarrassed by being besotted with the idea of living in London. It's such a terrible cliché: middle-class, white Australian girl grows up watching too much Press Gang, This Life and Black Books and, on finishing school, dreams of becoming an Antipodean Bridget Jones, follows the well-worn road of a gap year, moves to England, has a brilliant time and maybe never comes back. I thought for sure I would take that path. But I kept putting it off. After my final high school exams, I was still not quite 18 and didn't feel brave enough to go live in a strange city on my own. After university, I needed money before I could consider the move, so I found three jobs and got to work, putting off the trip for another year. The next obstacle was a boyfriend I didn't want to break up with. That time, I even got as far as starting my year away, only to spend the first month with him in Europe before throwing in the towel on my plan to continue to London and coming home with him. Then, back in Sydney, there was a job: a highly sought-after (by a particular subset of people with a fondness for books and extremely low salaries) entry-level position at a well-known multinational publishing house. I couldn't say no to getting my foot in the door of such a glamorous and exciting industry, could I? You can see where this is going. For the next decade I worked away in publishing, moving up the ladder, quietly living through my 20s and watching as every year friends left for time abroad, building new lives that some returned from and some didn't. I stopped thinking that could be me. I had a mortgage now, and a relationship, work I enjoyed, family I adored and great friends. It would be silly to throw all that away. Before I knew it, 20 years had passed and I had a great life. I was a mother of two, happily married, living in suburban Sydney – and I had pivoted from editing to writing books for a living. Books largely set in suburban Sydney, about mothers living perfectly good lives. After three novels, I began to see a pattern emerging: all these women wanted more. The regret I had swallowed about my permanently delayed gap year began to creep back. My world had closed up around that potential gap, leaving no great scar, but there was a tingle of discontent, like you get before a cold sore erupts. Loading The human propensity for dissatisfaction is what has led us to where we are today as a species. It's why we figured out how to control fire and domesticate animals, and build shelter; what led us to strive for discovery, exploration and invention. (It's responsible for the climate crisis and most wars, along with social media and celebrity culture – so, you know, not all good things.) It's also pretty insufferable coming from a person of great privilege and good fortune, so I did what any writer does to try to validate their feelings: I turned it into material. I began to consider regret and what it has to teach us. This regret about not taking a gap year has shaped me: I'm intensely curious about (read: deeply envious of) people who have moved to other countries, either briefly or permanently. I wondered if there was something in that regret that could be incorporated into my life now. Was this a sign that I wanted to uproot my family and move overseas?
