2024 Stella Prize video series

Stella presents Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy, performed by Tasma Walton.

Praiseworthy

Boonwurrung actor Tasma Walton performs a scene from Alexis Wright’s fourth novel, Praiseworthy.

About the book: Praiseworthy is an epic set in the north of Australia, told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned. In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. This is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days. Read more …

About the actor: Tasma Walton is a proud Boonwurrung woman from the saltwater Country of Melbourne and surrounding coastlines. She is an actor and producer known for popular shows Mystery Road (2018) and The Claremont Murders (2023). She was in the hit movie How to Please a Woman (2022) and Sweet As (2023).

Filmed and edited by Samantha Meuleman

Produced by Fiona Sweet and Claudia Nankervis

Make up: Annie Rose Foretti for for MECCA M-POWER

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This month Stella celebrates Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright, the winner of the 2024 Stella Prize. This is an excerpt from her conversation …

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