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Stella > The Stella Prize > 2021

The 2021 Stella Prize

The winner of the 2021 Stella Prize is Evie Wyld for her novel The Bass Rock. Wyld receives $50,000 in prize money thanks to the generous support of the Wilson Foundation.

 

 

  • 2023
  • Entries + Eligibility
  • Browse by Year
Longlist announced
4 March 2021
Catch up on the broadcast
Shortlist announced
25 March 2021
Read the announcement
Winner announced
22 April 2021
Watch Evie Wyld's acceptance speech

2021 Winner

Evie Wyld

The Bass Rock

Fiction · Penguin Random House

“At once confronting, chaotic and charming, The Bass Rock is a perplexingly brilliant novel that will challenge and test the reader. Set across multiple time periods, and with three distinct narrative voices throughout, the book blurs the line between the past and the present, the real and the imagined, the natural and the unnatural world.”

– 2021 Stella Prize Judges

About the author

Evie Wyld grew up in Australia and the UK. Her first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. Evie’s second novel, All The Birds, Singing, won the 2014 Miles Franklin Award.


2021 Stella Prize Shortlist

Rebecca Giggs
Fathoms: the world in the whale
S.L. Lim
Revenge: Murder in Three Parts
Evie Wyld
The Bass Rock
Laura Jean McKay
The Animals in That Country
Louise Milligan
Witness
Mirandi Riwoe
Stone Sky Gold Mountain

News
April 2021

Evie Wyld’s 2021 Stella Prize acceptance speech

Listen to, or read the full transcript of Evie Wyld’s acceptance speech upon winning the 2021 Stella Prize.

Read
News
March 2021

Announcing the 2021 Stella Prize Shortlist

The Stella judges have selected six exceptional books for the 2021 Stella Prize shortlist.

Read
Events
March 2021

Catch up on the 2021 Stella Prize Longlist broadcast

Catch up on our 2021 Stella Prize Longlist broadcast here to learn more about each of the twelve books.

Read

Further reading

Read ‘Evie Wyld tops and tails the MeToo movement and wins the Stella Prize’ by Jason Steger, The Sydney Morning Herald

Listen to ‘Stella prize shortlist on climate change, male violence, racism and pandemics’ on ABC’s The Book Show

Read ‘Stella prize 2021: finalists ‘span the gamut’ of human enterprise and experience’ by Kelly Burke, The Guardian


2021 Stella Prize Longlist

Rebecca Giggs
Fathoms: the world in the whale
S.L. Lim
Revenge: Murder in Three Parts
Evie Wyld
The Bass Rock
Laura Jean McKay
The Animals in That Country
Louise Milligan
Witness
Cath Moore
Metal Fish, Falling Snow
Intan Paramaditha
The Wandering
Mirandi Riwoe
Stone Sky Gold Mountain
Ellena Savage
Blueberries
Nardi Simpson
Song of the Crocodile
Elizabeth Tan
Smart Ovens for Lonely People
Jessie Tu
A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing


The 2021 Stella Prize longlist demonstrates the breadth of expression present in Australian literature, and the importance of raising the profile of women and non-binary voices in celebrating this expansive talent. In reading these titles, we pondered what might be lost or overlooked should a prize such as the Stella not exist to specifically examine the output of Australian women and non-binary writers.

In years as uncertain as 2020 and 2021, it is fitting that the Stella Prize longlist includes titles that span the gamut of human enterprise and experience.

This year’s reading presented a diversity of talent and expression, with books exploring people and animals through the lens of fiction and non-fiction, and with a common objective to reach into the heart of what it means to exist in the world today.

The diversity present in this longlist, in terms of style, technique and subject matter, as well as the writers’ ages, experiences and identities, is what makes it so exciting. In this longlist we celebrate experimentalism, risk and vivacity in writing. Here we have books about emotional dysfunction, colonialism, racial identity, sex, the failures of our political and justice systems, the triumph of nature, and much more.

Whilst there were far more than twelve outstanding books entered for this year’s Stella Prize, we are incredibly excited to have longlisted these texts as examples of the high calibre of emerging and established talent in the Australian literary sector.


2021 Judges

Zoya Patel (Chair)
Jane Harrison
Elizabeth McCarthy
Ian See
Tamara Zimet

This program is proudly supported by:


    Stella Prize Award Sponsor


    Program Partners



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