Skip to content
Stella

Stella

Donate Now
  • About
    • Our Purpose
    • Our People
    • Support Stella
  • The Stella Prize
    • 2023 Prize
    • Entries + Eligibility
    • Browse by Year
  • Initiatives
    • Research
    • Education
    • Residencies
  • Explore
    • News
    • Events – Upcoming and past Stella events.
    • Interviews
  • About
    • Our Purpose
    • Our People
    • Support Stella
  • The Stella Prize
    • 2023 Prize
    • Entries + Eligibility
    • Browse by Year
  • Initiatives
    • Research
    • Education
    • Residencies
  • Explore
    • News
    • Events
    • Interviews
Donate Now
Stella > The Stella Prize > 2016

The 2016 Stella Prize

The winner of the 2016 Stella Prize is Charlotte Wood for her novel The Natural Way of Things. Wood receives $50,000 in prize money thanks to the generous support of National Australia Bank.

  • 2023
  • Entries + Eligibility
  • Browse by Year

2016 Winner

Charlotte Wood

The Natural Way of Things

Fiction · Allen & Unwin

“The Natural Way of Things is a novel of – and for – our times, explosive yet written with artful, incisive coolness. It parodies, with steely seriousness, the state of being visible and female in contemporary Western society.”

– 2016 Stella Prize Judges

About the author

Charlotte Wood is the author of six novels and two books of non-fiction. Her most recent novel The Weekend was published in 2019. In 2019 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant services to literature, and was named one of the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence.


2016 Stella Prize Shortlist

Tegan Bennett Daylight
Six Bedrooms
Peggy Frew
Hope Farm
Elizabeth Harrower
A Few Days in the Country: And Other Stories
Mireille Juchau
The World Without Us
Charlotte Wood
The Natural Way of Things
Fiona Wright
Small Acts of Disappearance

News
April 2016

Charlotte Wood’s Stella Prize acceptance speech

Read the full transcript of Charlotte Wood’s acceptance speech upon winning the 2016 Stella Prize.

Read
News
April 2016

2016 Stella Prize Award Night: Chair of Judges Brenda Walker announces the winner

Read the full speech given by Chair of Judges Brenda Walker at 2016 Stella Prize Award Night, announcing the winner.

Read
Interviews
April 2016

The Stella Interview: Charlotte Wood

In this special Stella interview Charlotte Wood reflects on her writing process and the real life inspiration behind her book.

Read

2016 Stella Prize Longlist

Debra Adelaide
The Women’s Pages
Stephanie Bishop
The Other Side of the World
Tegan Bennett Daylight
Six Bedrooms
Peggy Frew
Hope Farm
Jen Craig
Panthers and the Museum of Fire
Elizabeth Harrower
A Few Days in the Country: And Other Stories
Gail Jones
A Guide To Berlin
Mireille Juchau
The World Without Us
Amanda Lohrey
A Short History of Richard Kline
Alice Robinson
Anchor Point
Charlotte Wood
The Natural Way of Things
Fiona Wright
Small Acts of Disappearance


The longlist for the 2016 Stella Prize demonstrates the current strength of Australian women’s narrative, featuring both highly accomplished new writers and many works that represent a culmination of the skills of established writers. Excellent writing generates a culture of reading and appreciation of literature that in turn stimulates further literary creativity, and 2016 will prove to be a good year for this process of collective inspiration in our literary ecology.

Many of the works on the longlist are set in the countryside, adding to a tradition in Australian literature that offers both idyllic and unsettling accounts of rural life. Women writers have, historically, contributed most powerfully to this tradition, and the rural fictions on the longlist remind us of the frailty of the natural world, the value of documenting the appearance of the landscape and the way that contradictory motivations can play out most visibly in isolated situations.  Writing about childhood and adolescence is another Australian literary tradition that many of the longlisted works contribute to. Children in these books are watchful, alert to adult tensions that may have extreme consequences for them, and this watchfulness makes for compelling reading. Many explore women’s creativity in the form of storytelling, painting or pottery, taking us into proximity with art at its source. Now in its fourth year, the Stella Prize celebrates Australian women’s literature at its most powerful and inventive.


2016 Judges

Emily Maguire
Alice Pung
Brenda Walker (chair)
Geordie Williamson
Suzy Wilson

This program is proudly supported by:


    Stella Prize Award Partner


    Program Partners



Share via:      
Subscribe

Contact Stella

The Stella Prize Inc
C-The State Library of Victoria
328 Swanston Street
Melbourne VIC 3000

info@stella.org.au


Stella acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to land, waters, community, and culture. We pay our respect to Elders past and present and, through them, to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Stella relies on the generous support of donors to help fund our work. Every donation is important to us and allows Stella to continue – and expand – its role as a leading voice for gender equality and cultural change in Australian literature.

View our current donors

Donate Today


    Stella is grateful to the ongoing generosity of our patrons:


    This website was made with the support of:



A voice for gender equality and cultural change in Australian literature