Stella Prize shortlist revealed as violence highlighted again

The shortlist for the $50,000 Stella Prize for writing by women was announced yesterday, International Women’s Day.

‘It is the grief and rage at the heart of it’: Stella Prize nominee Emily Maguire, at Adelaide Writers Week, says violence leaves reminders everywhere. Picture: James Elsby

The shortlist for the $50,000 ­Stella Prize for writing by Australian women was announced yesterday to mark International Women’s Day.

Twenty-four hours earlier, the nation had reeled at reports revealing­ a 22-year-old British backpacker had been abducted in Queensland and raped and abused­ over two months.

This brutal coincidence of timing­ — violence against women and celebration of women — is something not lost on Sydney writer Emily Maguire, shortlisted for her disquieting novel An Isolated Incident, which centres on the abduction and unspeakabl­e murder of a young woman.

Maguire, 40, said women had made important progress towards equality since the feminist revolution of the 70s but “there are still big struggles”, especially the one that claims lives.

“Women from all strata of societ­y suffer risk of violence from men,’’ she said.

“In Australia, one woman a week is murdered, usually by men, usually by men they know.

“It is the grief and rage at the heart of it — for women who want to live with men, with friendship, with love, with lust — to have this reminder what the cost of that can be.’’

An Isolated Incident is Maguire­’s fourth novel. Set in a truck-stop town between Sydney and Melbourne, it starts with police confirming the murder of Bella Michaels. The relative they inform is her older sister, barmaid Chris Michaels, who is the main character.

At one point, Chris, her grief almost unendurable, thinks of the sort of men who commit such crimes and go on living, of men who are not violent themselves but misunderstand or misinterpret violent acts and, finally, of men who are “good of heart and intent”.

“My heart wants to say it’s most of them,’’ she says of the good men, “ … but we have no way of telling those from the others, until it’s too late and that, perhaps, is the most unbearable thing of all.”

Maguire’s non-fiction books include Princesses and Porn Stars: Sex Power and Identity. She has been committed to the Stella Prize since it started five years ago. “This is a prize in which I have an emotional investment, so being shortlisted is special for me, especially when it’s with such an incredible group of writers.”

The other shortlistees are Georgia Blain for her novel Between a Wolf and a Dog; Maxine Beneba Clarke for The Hate Race, a memoir of modern Australian racism; Catherine de Saint Phalle for Poum and Alexandre, a portrait of her troubled parents; Heather Rose for her novel T he Museum of Modern Love; and Cory Taylor for her memoir Dying.

Blain and Taylor died last year. They will receive special mention at the awards ceremony in Melbourne on April 18.