Tasmania writer Heather Rose wins $50,000 Stella Prize

Tasmanian writer wins the $50,000 prize for novel that uses a famous real artist to paint a portrait of love and loss.

Tasmanian author Heather Rose at her home in Kingston near Hobart, Tasmania. Picture: Peter Mathew.

Tasmanian writer Heather Rose has won the $50,000 Stella Prize for The Museum of Modern Love, a novel that uses a famous real artist to paint a portrait of love, loss, grief, and the importance of art in day-to-day life.

The novel, Rose’s seventh book, has Serbian artist Marina Abramovic at its centre. In 2010 in New York, Abramovic held an exhibition where she sat silent in a chair and let people sit opposite and look at her. She did this for a total of 72 days. As well as being looked at by thousands of ordinary gallery goers she attracted celebrity viewers such as Lou Reed and Bjork.

Rose’s fictional characters intersect with Abramovic’s show. The 70-year-old artist allowed herself to be included in the book, but the author stresses that she remains a made-up character in an emotional sense.

“I realised that what people took from her art was more important than her personal story,’’ Rose told The Australian. She went to New York to see the artist in 2010. “That I attribute to this character does not mean it’s how the real artist thinks or feels.’’

Rose said winning the Stella, a prize for female Australian writers that is now in its fifth year, was career defining.

“It’s the first prize I’ve won that has prize money attached,’’ she said with a laugh. More importantly, she said, the prize was a “beautiful recognition’’ of Australian women’s literature, which had been unrecognised in the past.

“To win the Stella is amazing! I am surprised, delighted and deeply appreciative of the increased awareness this will bring to my novel. It’s something of a miracle when, after many years of work, a book with its own special life beyond the clandestine world of the author’s mind wins a major literary prize.’’

Rose prevailed over a strong shortlist that, on a sad note, included two authors who died last year: Cory Taylor for her memoir Dying and Georgia Blain for her novel Between a Wolf and a Dog. Also in contention were Maxine Beneba Clark for The Hate Race, Emily Maguire for An Isolated Incident and Catherine de Saint Phalle for Poum and Alexandre.

The award was announced at an event in Melbourne. The head of the judging panel, writer Brenda Walker, said the The Museum of Modern Love was “an unusual and remarkable achievement, a meditation on the social, spiritual and artistic importance of seeing and being seen, and listening for voices from the present and past that may or may not be easy to hear’’.