Latest news with #MilesFranklinLiteraryAward
ABC News
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
All the snubs, surprises and favourites from the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist
The shortlist for the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award — Australia's most prestigious literary prize — features a dual winner (Michelle de Kretser), two repeat shortlistees (Brian Castro and Fiona McFarlane), and three writers shortlisted for the first time (Julie Janson, Siang Lu and debut author Winnie Dunn). Tim Winton, longlisted for his dystopian cli-fi thriller Juice, missed out on the shortlist and his chance to bag a fifth Miles Franklin award. The shortlist has grown increasingly diverse in recent years, and 2025 is no exception, with five writers of colour in the running for the $60,000 award. Female writers have also dominated the prize in the past decade. If Castro or Lu win, it will be the first time a male author has taken out the award since 2016, when AS Patrić won for his debut novel, Black Rock White City. Last year, Waanyi writer Alexis Wright won for Praiseworthy, an epic novel set in northern Australia that also took out the Stella Prize. This year's winner will be announced on July 24. To take a closer look at the shortlist, we've brought together The Book Show's Claire Nichols and Sarah L'Estrange, The Bookshelf's Kate Evans, and writer and critic Declan Fry. Sarah L'Estrange: Each of the six books investigates race, class and gender in contemporary Australia but in different ways. It's very hard to compare books like Ghost Cities and Dirt Poor Islanders because they're written in such distinct ways, but they both encourage us to think about narrative and who owns stories. Declan Fry: I was surprised to see Highway 13 on the list — it's a short story collection. That's a first, and it could be the most radical thing the Miles Franklin has ever done. I'm here for it — I love to see the definition of the novel always expanding. Claire Nichols: We're getting a novel competition that is moving further from the traditional novel form. DF: Many of these novels are also quite formless. Kate Evans: I like the fact that they're not afraid to include things that are a bit difficult. I thought this shortlist was more interesting than some of the shortlists we've seen recently because they're not all conventional narratives. CN: The list leaves me a little cold. I wanted to see Tim Winton make it. We know he doesn't need another Miles Franklin — he already has four — but I thought Juice was an exciting novel. It was Winton outside his comfort zone, writing a speculative fiction story. There was a great urgency to the writing and a thrilling plot there, too. It felt like a big moment in his writing career. I also wanted to see The Burrow make it. This tiny, perfect novel by Melanie Cheng, did so much with so little: one family, a rabbit, COVID and grief. I thought it was a gorgeous piece of traditional novel writing. SL: Perhaps not a traditional Miles Franklin novel, Woo Woo by Ella Baxter is about a woman on the edge and I found it enjoyable and vital. Catherine McKinnon's To Sing of War is another one that didn't even make the longlist — I thought that was a wonderful book. CN: There's been an explosion of own-voices fiction in Australia in the last five to 10 years, and I think Dirt Poor Islanders is up there with the best examples of the genre. SL: It was a pleasure to read. It felt like Ruth Park's Harp in the South for our times, an entrée for most of Australia into this small Tongan Australian community. It's charming, it doesn't pull its punches and, while it might seem like a simple story because it presents as semi-autobiographical, I appreciated the layers as well. DF: It's a very honest book; it has a lot of integrity. One thing I loved was the self-deprecating and ironic humour. There's pathos in it too. Meadow's dreams are limited by the structural constraints on her family's lives. CN: It's a fascinating study of motherhood. The narrator, Meadow, just like Winnie Dunn, lost her mother very young, but in Tongan culture everyone is a mother, so the grandmother and all the aunties are her mother as well. I admired the liveliness of the writing, and I love how tactile it is — you can smell the food, and you can feel the sweat and how crowded that house is in Mount Druitt, full of all those aunties. KE: Theory & Practice starts as one thing, which is an archetypal Australian outsider narrative, and then it ditches that and becomes something else, which is the story of a young woman in the 1980s, immersed in the Melbourne academic world of both theory and practice. This is one I've read twice, and I read it differently the second time. The first time I was struck by the deftness and the humour of it. When I re-read it, I felt like I was reading into other layers of the work. The more you look at it, the more it offers you. SL: I feel like it wore its seriousness heavily, Kate! KE: Oh, you didn't find it funny? SL: I read it as a sad-girl novel — it has all the elements. This one, though, is set in 1980s Melbourne. A woman disaffected is looking back over her life, finding it hard to find her place, having relationships with the wrong men, knowing that she shouldn't be, but still doing it. DF: I didn't care for the interrupted narrative at the beginning, but I did think it was cool that de Kretser has an 'I' who says, 'My novel was failing, so I decided to do something different.' That makes it sound like de Kretser is speaking to us but of course, it's not her, it's an authorial persona. I thought that was clever. CN: And she's put her own picture on the cover of the book! She's playing with the expectations of what we look for in fiction, which I find so fascinating when you compare it to something like Winnie Dunn's book, which is just straight-up autobiography. There's no veil there for Dunn, but de Kretser is hiding herself in the book. KE: The main character of Chinese Postman lives in the Adelaide Hills. He's alienated people, he loves his dogs, he's telling stories, he's surrounded by piles of books. You could easily make the case that what Castro is doing here is telling stories from his own life and playing around with his identity — he was a postman and he's also Chinese, Portuguese and Jewish, but unlike female writers, male writers aren't generally labelled as autobiographical novelists. DF: I like his debut, Birds of Passage, a lot. It felt the freest of his books. This one is perhaps the most diaristic and fragmented, even though many of them have mixed theory, fiction and biographical elements. KE: That's a warning we should make to readers — this is not a plot-driven novel. It's a novel of ideas. It's one of those books in which nothing happens and everything happens, which I like, but you have to be in the right mode to read it. You can read it like reading James Joyce: start in the middle, read fragments, read it back and forwards. A novel can be hard work and still be worth reading. CN: I'm Team Ghost Cities. I love Australian fiction that surprises you and I like Australian authors who take a big swing, and Siang Lu did that with his first novel, The Whitewash. It was hysterically funny and weird and had something important to say about race in Australia. Ghost Cities is just as experimental and wild, just as silly yet serious. Any book that has a guy who has been fired from his job as a translator because he was using Google Translate and then gets picked up by a film director called Baby Bao to work on a film in a place called Port Man Tou — that is all funny, weird stuff that excites me. There's also this gorgeous romance at the centre of it, which feels very true. There's another section about an ancient Chinese dynasty exploring ideas around art and creation. It's told in this mythic style, and I loved that too. Siang Lu is doing things that no other author in Australia is doing. DF: I have problems with the ending; I don't think he quite sticks the landing. It just ends rather than concluding satisfyingly. SL: It's not an easy read if you don't connect with the fable-like narrative style. You can be left flailing — but there are enough anchors to take you through, and the elements come together like a good puzzle. KE: I love the fact that a competition about showing Australian life in all its aspects includes Chinese cities and multiple identities. DF: I second what Kate says — I want to see more Chinese language in Australian fiction. For many people in the big cities, you hear Mandarin as much as English, and this book is filled with Mandarin. DF: It's lovely to see a small publisher, Magabala Books in particular, on the shortlist. SL: Compassion is a sequel to Julie Janson's 2020 novel, Benevolence, which was about a young Darug woman named Muraging, also called Mary James, growing up in the NSW colony in the 1800s. This book is about her daughter Duringah, or Nellie James, and she's based on Janson's great-great grandmother who showed up in court records over the years for stealing cattle and sheep. CN: Nellie has been a fighter since she was a kid. She's fighting against these men who inflict violence on her and enslave her. What I appreciated about this character was her utter fury and rage about the injustice of the life that she lives. She never settles and she never accepts it, and I found that appealing in a book that is quite confrontational. DF: I think this is the big talking point — how did a short story collection get onto the shortlist? KE: I read it as a novel. Each story addresses the same subject in an interestingly lateral way — this serial killer based on Ivan Milat, but McFarlane gives him a different name, Paul Biga. I like the way it explores the repercussions of a terrible event without just focusing on the families of victims or the cops, although they're in there as well. She also manages to slide in questions about the ethics of crime and true crime, which is so problematic. SL: I appreciated her agility as a writer to go from one set of characters and leap to another to create this portrait around a central figure who's never present. Like with Ghost Cities, you're trying to put the puzzle together. In each of the stories, you're primed as a reader: you're thinking, 'How does this relate to the crime? What are the connections?' And you have to stick with it to get the reward of working out what the connection is, even if it's very tenuous. DF: Fiona McFarlane's a lovely stylist. The prose is consistently very strong and I like how she plays with form. SL: I'd be happy if Highway 13 or Dirt Poor Islanders won. DF: My favourite was Theory & Practice, but Dirt Poor Islanders would be my left-field pick. CN: Michelle de Kretser has already won the Stella Prize this year — I don't think we want to see another calendar year where we have the same winner of both the Stella and the Miles Franklin. I'd love to see the wealth spread around. I'm going for Ghost Cities — I don't think it's a perfect book, but I love its ambition and that it's different and fun on what is a somewhat stodgy list. KE: I'll say Highway 13 for the win. It's a book that throws the form up in the air.
The Advertiser
24-06-2025
- Business
- The Advertiser
Here's something absolutely cooked about books in Australia
It's a big week for Australian culture, with announcement of the shortlist for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, one of the country's top writing prizes. Past winners of the award include legendary writers such as Tim Winton, Thomas Keneally, Alexis Wright, Thea Astley and Peter Carey. And because it's Australian culture, you can place a bet with a bookmaker on which title on the shortlist will win the award. The winner of the Miles Franklin can expect prize money of $60,000. Many will then pay around $20,000 of that back in income tax. But if you picked the winner of the Miles Franklin with the bookies, your winnings are tax-free. Isn't that weird? Winning authors pay tax. Mug punters, no tax. It gets weirder. If you win the lottery, Who wants to be a Millionaire or The Block, you don't pay tax on your prize money. Win the Stella Prize for writing by Australian women - pay tax. Win the Archibald prize for painting - pay tax. How about the Prime Minister's Literary Awards? Well in that case, "All prizes are tax-free" is in bold on the website. This shows that whether prizes are taxed is completely arbitrary. It is a decision for Australian governments to make. And should the Australian government choose to axe the taxes on arts prizes, they would be making a sound investment in Australian culture. The loss of revenue would be unnoticed by a government that just gave away $215 billion dollars' worth of natural gas for free. It would barely register given the $10 billion in subsidies the government handed over in the form of the fuel tax credit to mining companies. By contrast, an extra few thousand dollars in the pockets of writers really makes a difference. According to the Australian Tax Office, the median income for Australian authors is $32,760, which is below the poverty line. Creative Australia ran a survey in 2022 finding the average writer's annual income is $18,200. Average or median, either way, most Australian authors have incomes below the poverty line. For writers on a small income, a prize can mean the difference between taking a year off work to write their next book and trying to fit writing in between other jobs. In the case of a Miles Franklin or Stella Prize win, a tax-free prize could mean the difference between $60,000 and $40,000 in their bank account. Stella Prize winner Dr Charlotte Wood AM says, "for those few writers who win, it would mean that a year's income could easily stretch to keep them going for an extra year or even two or three, without the extraordinary financial and attendant psychological strain most artists live beneath. Imagine if we were a society generous enough to allow this tiny gift." Easing the pressure on an author from finding other sources of income so they can develop their next book can mean the difference between building a career and getting stuck in short-term and poorly paid stop-gap work. Prize money doesn't simply affect an individual artist but, in some cases, their community as well. Miles Franklin winner and Bundjalung author Melissa Lucashenko said she paid $15,000 tax on her win in 2019. She says: "I'm very happy to pay tax - to contribute to a decent society - but at the same time, I belong to an extremely impoverished community. I am regularly called on to give money to people who buy their food on credit. Who can't bury their dead, or who need petrol to get to funerals, or who can't get out of jail to attend the funeral of a parent because that means paying the prison system the astronomical cost of guards to accompany them. $15,000 fills a lot of grocery carts, and a lot of petrol tanks." For an author such as Lucashenko, who is a central figure, regularly supporting those in her community, means that the effects on the increase in prize money move out through networks and benefit more than a handful of prize-winners themselves. READ MORE: This measure is not just important for writers; taxing prize money applies to playwrights, painters, musicians and artists from all disciplines. The National Association for Visual Arts has been an advocate for tax-free prizes for many years. Making prize money tax free is not charity. It is a way to foster our best artists, the people who help Australia understand and see itself clearly. Australia gives away extraordinary amounts of gas and offers massive subsidies in the form of fuel tax credits - why do we accept these enormous subsidies and not ask for better support of our artists? With pressure on artists from cost of living and culture wars, and on publishers whose margins have shrunk thanks to increasing paper prices and spikes in the costs of logistics, the effects of making prizes tax free could mean we see the next Tim Winton have the time and resources to write their novel, rather than working three casual jobs to make ends meet and trying to squeeze writing in between. It is time for governments to take a serious punt on Australian artists. It's a big week for Australian culture, with announcement of the shortlist for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, one of the country's top writing prizes. Past winners of the award include legendary writers such as Tim Winton, Thomas Keneally, Alexis Wright, Thea Astley and Peter Carey. And because it's Australian culture, you can place a bet with a bookmaker on which title on the shortlist will win the award. The winner of the Miles Franklin can expect prize money of $60,000. Many will then pay around $20,000 of that back in income tax. But if you picked the winner of the Miles Franklin with the bookies, your winnings are tax-free. Isn't that weird? Winning authors pay tax. Mug punters, no tax. It gets weirder. If you win the lottery, Who wants to be a Millionaire or The Block, you don't pay tax on your prize money. Win the Stella Prize for writing by Australian women - pay tax. Win the Archibald prize for painting - pay tax. How about the Prime Minister's Literary Awards? Well in that case, "All prizes are tax-free" is in bold on the website. This shows that whether prizes are taxed is completely arbitrary. It is a decision for Australian governments to make. And should the Australian government choose to axe the taxes on arts prizes, they would be making a sound investment in Australian culture. The loss of revenue would be unnoticed by a government that just gave away $215 billion dollars' worth of natural gas for free. It would barely register given the $10 billion in subsidies the government handed over in the form of the fuel tax credit to mining companies. By contrast, an extra few thousand dollars in the pockets of writers really makes a difference. According to the Australian Tax Office, the median income for Australian authors is $32,760, which is below the poverty line. Creative Australia ran a survey in 2022 finding the average writer's annual income is $18,200. Average or median, either way, most Australian authors have incomes below the poverty line. For writers on a small income, a prize can mean the difference between taking a year off work to write their next book and trying to fit writing in between other jobs. In the case of a Miles Franklin or Stella Prize win, a tax-free prize could mean the difference between $60,000 and $40,000 in their bank account. Stella Prize winner Dr Charlotte Wood AM says, "for those few writers who win, it would mean that a year's income could easily stretch to keep them going for an extra year or even two or three, without the extraordinary financial and attendant psychological strain most artists live beneath. Imagine if we were a society generous enough to allow this tiny gift." Easing the pressure on an author from finding other sources of income so they can develop their next book can mean the difference between building a career and getting stuck in short-term and poorly paid stop-gap work. Prize money doesn't simply affect an individual artist but, in some cases, their community as well. Miles Franklin winner and Bundjalung author Melissa Lucashenko said she paid $15,000 tax on her win in 2019. She says: "I'm very happy to pay tax - to contribute to a decent society - but at the same time, I belong to an extremely impoverished community. I am regularly called on to give money to people who buy their food on credit. Who can't bury their dead, or who need petrol to get to funerals, or who can't get out of jail to attend the funeral of a parent because that means paying the prison system the astronomical cost of guards to accompany them. $15,000 fills a lot of grocery carts, and a lot of petrol tanks." For an author such as Lucashenko, who is a central figure, regularly supporting those in her community, means that the effects on the increase in prize money move out through networks and benefit more than a handful of prize-winners themselves. READ MORE: This measure is not just important for writers; taxing prize money applies to playwrights, painters, musicians and artists from all disciplines. The National Association for Visual Arts has been an advocate for tax-free prizes for many years. Making prize money tax free is not charity. It is a way to foster our best artists, the people who help Australia understand and see itself clearly. Australia gives away extraordinary amounts of gas and offers massive subsidies in the form of fuel tax credits - why do we accept these enormous subsidies and not ask for better support of our artists? With pressure on artists from cost of living and culture wars, and on publishers whose margins have shrunk thanks to increasing paper prices and spikes in the costs of logistics, the effects of making prizes tax free could mean we see the next Tim Winton have the time and resources to write their novel, rather than working three casual jobs to make ends meet and trying to squeeze writing in between. It is time for governments to take a serious punt on Australian artists. It's a big week for Australian culture, with announcement of the shortlist for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, one of the country's top writing prizes. Past winners of the award include legendary writers such as Tim Winton, Thomas Keneally, Alexis Wright, Thea Astley and Peter Carey. And because it's Australian culture, you can place a bet with a bookmaker on which title on the shortlist will win the award. The winner of the Miles Franklin can expect prize money of $60,000. Many will then pay around $20,000 of that back in income tax. But if you picked the winner of the Miles Franklin with the bookies, your winnings are tax-free. Isn't that weird? Winning authors pay tax. Mug punters, no tax. It gets weirder. If you win the lottery, Who wants to be a Millionaire or The Block, you don't pay tax on your prize money. Win the Stella Prize for writing by Australian women - pay tax. Win the Archibald prize for painting - pay tax. How about the Prime Minister's Literary Awards? Well in that case, "All prizes are tax-free" is in bold on the website. This shows that whether prizes are taxed is completely arbitrary. It is a decision for Australian governments to make. And should the Australian government choose to axe the taxes on arts prizes, they would be making a sound investment in Australian culture. The loss of revenue would be unnoticed by a government that just gave away $215 billion dollars' worth of natural gas for free. It would barely register given the $10 billion in subsidies the government handed over in the form of the fuel tax credit to mining companies. By contrast, an extra few thousand dollars in the pockets of writers really makes a difference. According to the Australian Tax Office, the median income for Australian authors is $32,760, which is below the poverty line. Creative Australia ran a survey in 2022 finding the average writer's annual income is $18,200. Average or median, either way, most Australian authors have incomes below the poverty line. For writers on a small income, a prize can mean the difference between taking a year off work to write their next book and trying to fit writing in between other jobs. In the case of a Miles Franklin or Stella Prize win, a tax-free prize could mean the difference between $60,000 and $40,000 in their bank account. Stella Prize winner Dr Charlotte Wood AM says, "for those few writers who win, it would mean that a year's income could easily stretch to keep them going for an extra year or even two or three, without the extraordinary financial and attendant psychological strain most artists live beneath. Imagine if we were a society generous enough to allow this tiny gift." Easing the pressure on an author from finding other sources of income so they can develop their next book can mean the difference between building a career and getting stuck in short-term and poorly paid stop-gap work. Prize money doesn't simply affect an individual artist but, in some cases, their community as well. Miles Franklin winner and Bundjalung author Melissa Lucashenko said she paid $15,000 tax on her win in 2019. She says: "I'm very happy to pay tax - to contribute to a decent society - but at the same time, I belong to an extremely impoverished community. I am regularly called on to give money to people who buy their food on credit. Who can't bury their dead, or who need petrol to get to funerals, or who can't get out of jail to attend the funeral of a parent because that means paying the prison system the astronomical cost of guards to accompany them. $15,000 fills a lot of grocery carts, and a lot of petrol tanks." For an author such as Lucashenko, who is a central figure, regularly supporting those in her community, means that the effects on the increase in prize money move out through networks and benefit more than a handful of prize-winners themselves. READ MORE: This measure is not just important for writers; taxing prize money applies to playwrights, painters, musicians and artists from all disciplines. The National Association for Visual Arts has been an advocate for tax-free prizes for many years. Making prize money tax free is not charity. It is a way to foster our best artists, the people who help Australia understand and see itself clearly. Australia gives away extraordinary amounts of gas and offers massive subsidies in the form of fuel tax credits - why do we accept these enormous subsidies and not ask for better support of our artists? With pressure on artists from cost of living and culture wars, and on publishers whose margins have shrunk thanks to increasing paper prices and spikes in the costs of logistics, the effects of making prizes tax free could mean we see the next Tim Winton have the time and resources to write their novel, rather than working three casual jobs to make ends meet and trying to squeeze writing in between. It is time for governments to take a serious punt on Australian artists. It's a big week for Australian culture, with announcement of the shortlist for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, one of the country's top writing prizes. Past winners of the award include legendary writers such as Tim Winton, Thomas Keneally, Alexis Wright, Thea Astley and Peter Carey. And because it's Australian culture, you can place a bet with a bookmaker on which title on the shortlist will win the award. The winner of the Miles Franklin can expect prize money of $60,000. Many will then pay around $20,000 of that back in income tax. But if you picked the winner of the Miles Franklin with the bookies, your winnings are tax-free. Isn't that weird? Winning authors pay tax. Mug punters, no tax. It gets weirder. If you win the lottery, Who wants to be a Millionaire or The Block, you don't pay tax on your prize money. Win the Stella Prize for writing by Australian women - pay tax. Win the Archibald prize for painting - pay tax. How about the Prime Minister's Literary Awards? Well in that case, "All prizes are tax-free" is in bold on the website. This shows that whether prizes are taxed is completely arbitrary. It is a decision for Australian governments to make. And should the Australian government choose to axe the taxes on arts prizes, they would be making a sound investment in Australian culture. The loss of revenue would be unnoticed by a government that just gave away $215 billion dollars' worth of natural gas for free. It would barely register given the $10 billion in subsidies the government handed over in the form of the fuel tax credit to mining companies. By contrast, an extra few thousand dollars in the pockets of writers really makes a difference. According to the Australian Tax Office, the median income for Australian authors is $32,760, which is below the poverty line. Creative Australia ran a survey in 2022 finding the average writer's annual income is $18,200. Average or median, either way, most Australian authors have incomes below the poverty line. For writers on a small income, a prize can mean the difference between taking a year off work to write their next book and trying to fit writing in between other jobs. In the case of a Miles Franklin or Stella Prize win, a tax-free prize could mean the difference between $60,000 and $40,000 in their bank account. Stella Prize winner Dr Charlotte Wood AM says, "for those few writers who win, it would mean that a year's income could easily stretch to keep them going for an extra year or even two or three, without the extraordinary financial and attendant psychological strain most artists live beneath. Imagine if we were a society generous enough to allow this tiny gift." Easing the pressure on an author from finding other sources of income so they can develop their next book can mean the difference between building a career and getting stuck in short-term and poorly paid stop-gap work. Prize money doesn't simply affect an individual artist but, in some cases, their community as well. Miles Franklin winner and Bundjalung author Melissa Lucashenko said she paid $15,000 tax on her win in 2019. She says: "I'm very happy to pay tax - to contribute to a decent society - but at the same time, I belong to an extremely impoverished community. I am regularly called on to give money to people who buy their food on credit. Who can't bury their dead, or who need petrol to get to funerals, or who can't get out of jail to attend the funeral of a parent because that means paying the prison system the astronomical cost of guards to accompany them. $15,000 fills a lot of grocery carts, and a lot of petrol tanks." For an author such as Lucashenko, who is a central figure, regularly supporting those in her community, means that the effects on the increase in prize money move out through networks and benefit more than a handful of prize-winners themselves. READ MORE: This measure is not just important for writers; taxing prize money applies to playwrights, painters, musicians and artists from all disciplines. The National Association for Visual Arts has been an advocate for tax-free prizes for many years. Making prize money tax free is not charity. It is a way to foster our best artists, the people who help Australia understand and see itself clearly. Australia gives away extraordinary amounts of gas and offers massive subsidies in the form of fuel tax credits - why do we accept these enormous subsidies and not ask for better support of our artists? With pressure on artists from cost of living and culture wars, and on publishers whose margins have shrunk thanks to increasing paper prices and spikes in the costs of logistics, the effects of making prizes tax free could mean we see the next Tim Winton have the time and resources to write their novel, rather than working three casual jobs to make ends meet and trying to squeeze writing in between. It is time for governments to take a serious punt on Australian artists.
Scroll.in
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
A new UK publisher will focus on books by men. Are male writers and readers really under threat?
A new publisher, Conduit Books, founded by UK novelist and critic Jude Cook, will focus on publishing literary fiction and memoirs by men: at least initially. Conduit is currently seeking its launch title, 'preferably a debut novel by a male UK novelist under 35'. It aims to publish three books a year from 2026. Diminishing attention is now paid to male authors, Cook feels, creating a need for 'an independent publisher that champions literary fiction by men'. This argument has been made closer to home [in Australia] too. Earlier this year, Australian poet and fiction writer Michael Crane bemoaned the diminishing space and attention for male authors, claiming to be unfairly overlooked as a white male author over 50. Prizes, working writers and sales While more focused on age than gender, Crane noted, 'most books published locally are by women'. He also argued that female writers have recently come to dominate the Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist. There is some truth in this: since 2012, the year the Stella Prize was founded, there have been 12 women winners of the Miles Franklin and just one man. In the equivalent preceding period (1999–2011), there were ten men and three women. So, there has been a change – even a flip – in the past decade or so. That said, older male authors have historically been overrepresented in literary culture, both within Australia and globally. The shift seems, in part, a correction. Last year's overall top ten bestseller list in Australia reads similarly: seven titles were authored by women. Two of these, ranked first and second, were RecipeTin Eats cookbooks by Nagi Maehashi. In the UK, too, female authors are increasingly dominating publishing lists and the space and attention for male authors has dwindled. New and established male authors lack the 'cultural buzz' associated with female authors like Sally Rooney, who have arguably captured the literary zeitgeist, wrote literary critic Johanna Thomas-Corr in the Guardian. On the other hand, in the period when Australia's leading literary prize had 12 women and one male winner (2012–24), the Booker Prize was still narrowly dominated by men, with eight male and six female winners. (Two women, Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, shared the 2019 prize.) And in the US during that period, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was heavily dominated by men, with nine male and four female winners. (The 2023 prize was shared between Barbara Kingsolver and Hernan Diaz.) The 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction winner is Percival Everett, for James. Do men need better stories? While Cook's project has its sceptics, it seems well-intentioned. As Cook notes, current conversations around toxic masculinity make it more important than ever to 'pay attention to what young men are reading'. Other commentators have argued the decline of male authors and readers is a cause for concern, too. In recent months, Las Vegas English professor David J Morris argued in the New York Times that dwindling interest in literary fiction represents emotional, cultural and educational regression among men in the United States. He notes women readers now account for about 80% of US fiction sales. The alienated, disaffected young men who have been drawn to the 'manosphere' and contributed to Trump's second election win 'need better stories – and they need to see themselves as belonging to the world of storytelling'. He makes a good case for the importance of literary fiction in developing emotional intelligence – and that the decline in male readership is therefore troubling. Cook seems to agree: he believes important narratives and voices are being overlooked. He is keen to publish novels and stories that focus on fatherhood, masculinity, working-class life, relationships and other topics that relate to 'navigating the 21st century as a man'. He stresses, however, that Conduit Books is not taking an 'adversarial stance'. It will 'not exclude writers of colour, or queer, non-binary and neurodivergent authors'. Women read more than men A February 2025 Australia Reads survey indicates 'avid readers' (who regularly start new books and read daily) are predominantly women, whereas 'ambivalent readers' and 'uninterested non-readers' were far more likely to be men. Furthermore, recent research suggests there is still a significant gender bias in male reading habits. Men made up less than 20 per cent of the readership for the top ten bestselling titles by female authors, Nielsen Bookscan data revealed in 2023. Conversely, the readership for bestselling titles by male authors was more evenly split: 56 per cent men and 44 per cent women. Women, on balance, read far more than men do, and are much more willing to read books by men than men are to read books by women. It would be fair to say all writers of literary fiction are largely dependent on a predominantly female audience – and have been for a long time. Back in 2005, when male writers were not exactly underrepresented in the literary marketplace, UK novelist Ian McEwan embarked on an experiment. Seeking to clear out some shelf space, he took a stack of novels to a nearby park and attempted to give them away to passersby. The free books were happily accepted by women, but he failed to give away a single title to a man. McEwan gloomily concluded: 'When women stop reading, the novel will be dead'. Publishing and demand Cook believes works by men that grapple with themes especially relevant to male readers are 'not being commissioned' in the current literary environment. A 2020 diversity study reported 78 per cent of editorial staff in the UK are women (though the same study indicates just under half of senior management roles in publishing are still occupied by men). An anonymous male publisher told the Guardian a few years ago, 'the exciting writing is coming from women right now', but this was 'because there aren't that many men around. Men aren't coming through.' Another publisher, from literary imprint Serpent's Tail, said: 'If a really good novel by a male writer lands on my desk, I do genuinely say to myself, this will be more difficult to publish.' Sales figures seem to back this. The Guardian calculated, based on figures from the Bookseller, that 629 of the 1,000 bestselling fiction titles from 2020 were written by women, with 341 authored by men (27 were co-authored by men and women, and three were by non-binary writers). Of course, many still read the historical literary canon, which is overwhelmingly male. Cook seems to argue that men are now less interested in literary fiction because there are fewer contemporary male authors, and they attract less commentary and acclaim. But it is just as likely that female authors have become more prominent because women are consistently more engaged with literary fiction – and the publishing market is simply adapting to cater to its principal audience. Can we bring back male readers? So will publishing and promoting more men bring back male readers? Or does this just amount to a demand that the overwhelmingly female audience for literary fiction should pay more attention to male authors? As literary critic Thomas-Corr notes, regardless of authorship, a lot of men couldn't give a toss about fiction, especially literary fiction. They have video games, YouTube, nonfiction, podcasts, magazines, Netflix. Male writers are still well represented in these media, so perhaps it may be as or more important to devote serious attention to their narratives and storytelling practices. Novels aren't, after all, the only engines for emotional intelligence or empathy. Cook's initiative will at the very least create more discussion around the growing absence of male authors and readers in literary spaces, and will probably ensure the first few titles published by Conduit Press will be received with interest. But given contemporary reading demographics, it seems reasonable to expect male authors will occupy an increasingly niche space in literary publishing.
