Stella winner, and other book news

News from the book world from literary editor Caroline Overington.

Michelle de Kretser at home.

Warmest congratulations to Michelle de Kretser, who has won the 2025 Stella Prize for Theory & Practice (Text), her seventh novel (and the first to feature a glorious photograph of the author on the cover).

De Kretser will receive $60,000 in prize money from the ­Stella Forever Fund. She is already a two-time winner of the Miles Franklin Award, which is also named for Stella Miles Franklin, author of My Brilliant Career.

Set in the Melbourne beachside suburb of St Kilda in the 1980s, the narrator in Theory & Practice is a young graduate ­student researching Virginia Woolf.

The judges’ report says the novel “sinks its teeth into the Melbourne set. In her refusal to write a novel that reads like a novel, de Kretser instead gifts her reader a sharp examination of the complex pleasures and costs of living.”

Literary critic Diane Stubbingsreviewed the book for these pages last September, describing the achievement as “an author standing exposed before the reader, only to dematerialise and reform as something fictional (or not), a nimble sleight of hand reminding us of the shimmering illusion that is art”.

This year’s shortlist for the Stella was described by judges as “consequential for Australian literary history, as it is the first time it features only women of colour”.

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Pretty much nothing delights me more than lunch with a fabulous group of readers (and writers!), so I will definitely be going along to the Rose Scott Women Writers Festival in Sydney next month.

This year’s special guests are mother and daughter writers, Suzanne and Gina Chick, who have quite the story to tell.

May I try to convince you to come hear it?

The festival honours early feminist activist Rose Scott, and it’s the only one of its kind in Australia, owned and operated by women for women writers.

Gina and Suzanne Chick are descendants of Charmian Clift.

Suzanne is the daughter of the late Charmian Clift, who was one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Her newspaper columns used to ­attract bags of fan mail too large to even fit through her door.

Charmian gave Suzanne up, as a baby, and Suzanne’s book, Searching for Charmian, which has recently been re-released, is about her search for her origins.

Gina is Suzanne’s daughter, and therefore Charmian’s granddaughter, and she is the barefoot champion of the TV survival show, Alone. Her book, We Are the Stars, is a bestseller.

They will be in conversation over lunch at the festival.

Other guests include Tracey Spicer, Hannah Kent and ­Antoinette Lattouf.

Rose Scott was a founder of the Women’s Literary Society in 1889. She regularly hosted politicians, philanthropists and writers at evening salons at her home, in the rooms that included her ­library of works by contemporary women novelists and pioneering women.

The Rose Scott Women Writers Festival will run from June 27 to 28, with one-day passes now available. Don’t miss it.

Searching for Charmian by Charmian Clift’s daughter, Suzanne Chick

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I was pleased to receive a copy of Ian Swart’s memoir, titled Life’s Journey on a Magic Carpet.

He’s a rug dealer, meaning the founder, and director, of Hali Carpets, which he started after being on the hippie trail in the 1970s. He says: “Six weeks ago, I had a book launch for 200 people which included family, friends, and some people unknown to me. Since then, I have been receiving emails and messages daily with glowing reviews of my book, some from people I haven’t met.

“Last week I showed my book to Readings who felt it was a perfect fit for their stores, so they are now stocking it.”

The book is in two parts:

The author on the hippy trail in the 1970s.

“Part One is my life from my hippie years in the late 1960s and ’70s, travelling overland from Istanbul to Australia through Asia on what was known as the Hippie Trail.

“Part Two begins when I arrived back in Australia, re-entered the fashion industry and how through a family tragedy ended up in the handmade rug business. This drew me back to India, a country I had loved on my overland journey, which I have now visited over 100 times.

“ I changed the industry by introducing fashion via colour into traditional rugs and curating rug ranges specifically for Australia, steering the rug industry into a new course,” he says.

“It has been a great adventure and I feel very privileged and lucky … it is something that is (probably) not possible today.”

There are many marvellous pictures from the ’70s and ’80s in the book. If you’ve ever heard of Hali, you may want to track a copy down.

Life's Journey On A Magic Carpet.

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Today’s pages: I’m thrilled with this week’s pages. You can read an extract from the wonderful Linda Jaivin’s new book on China (she’s a Sinologist and translator); a review of the new passenger ship mystery by Toby Schmitz (fun fact, he’s also an actor, who was in Boy Swallows Universe); plus we have reviews of Kate Grenville’s Unsettled (a moving account of her journey back through her family history, and places many readers will recognise, from The Secret River); and a review of the brilliant debut that absolutely everyone’s book club will be reading this winter, ­Florence Knapp’s The Names.

Enjoy.