2024 Stella Prize shortlist videos
Stella presents The Swift Dark Tide, performed by Jane Harber.
Australian actor Jane Harber performs an excerpt from Katia Ariel’s debut memoir The Swift Dark Tide.
About the book: What happens when, in the middle of a happy heterosexual marriage, a woman falls in love with another woman? Part memoir, part love letter, The Swift Dark Tide is also a chronicle of life by the sea, journeying between Melbourne’s St Kilda and the Black Sea town of Odessa. Katia Ariel introduces us to a lineage of soulful, strident women and beautifully nuanced men. She invites us into home and heart to witness love, loss and joy, motherhood, daughterhood and the urgent wildness of the body. Read more.
About the actor: Jane Harber is best known for her role as Zara in Channel Ten’s Logie Award winning television series, Offspring. She was recently seen in the ABC series In Limbo, and the second season of the award-winning ABC series The Newsreader. She will next be seen in the US feature film Sleeping Dogs starring Russell Crowe. Jane has also appeared in Miss Fishers’s Murder Mysteries, My Life is Murder, House Husbands, Blue Heelers, The Secret of Us, Underbelly and the US thriller Pretty Little Stalker on Netflix.
Filmed and edited by Samantha Meuleman
Produced by Fiona Sweet and Claudia Nankervis
Make up: Annie Rose Foretti for for MECCA M-POWER
“I knew I wanted to write, but I didn’t really believe that I’d be allowed to, in the same way that I wasn’t allowed to play footy, even though I loved it and stole every moment of game time that I could. The more accessible authors are, the more accessible the idea of writing becomes.”
What do you think or hope the benefits of the Stella Prize Schools Program, and the recommended texts will be for students?
Fair and proportional representation among books that reflect Australia’s truly diverse society – on every level, whether that be culture, religion, sexuality, ability, any perceived ‘difference’. Not just because it’s right and fair, or because I believe in equality, but because anything less than this robs the next generation of a rich and full understanding of the world. And because as someone much smarter than me said, every child should be able to find themselves in stories.
What Australian authors should young readers get to know?
Kate Grenville, Rebecca Lim, Melissa Keil, Sally Rippin, Stella (Miles) Franklin, Tony Birch… That’s a good start.
What advice would you give to young aspiring writers?
Read everything you can get your hands on, and write every day.
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