Earlier this month, The Australian's literary editor Caroline Overington declared the issue of women writers "not being taken seriously in this country" as "solved".
The raw numbers for books published, reviewed and awarded prizes have improved, she argued, and the impact is being felt in bookshops and bestseller lists around the country.
The comment was presumably a relief to Australia's women writers, who could now turn their attention from those pesky issues of being paid, published and awarded less than men to other matters.
Overington credited Stella — an organisation specifically set up, in 2013, to tackle gender disparity in Australian literary prizes and reviews.
The organisation's flagship initiative is the annual $60,000 Stella Prize for writing by women and non-binary writers.
Over the last 10 years, the prize appears to have been spectacularly effective: In 2013, the prestigious Miles Franklin Award had only been won by a woman writer a total of 14 times in its 56-year history; in the last decade, by contrast, nine out of 10 winners have been women.
There's also been a pronounced shift in Australian book reviews: The most recent Stella Count audit, covering 2019-20, found that women authors attracted equal attention to their male peers.
Additionally, the visibility of the Stella has seen its longlisted, shortlisted and winning authors' sales rise, while offering them professional development and residency opportunities. The organisation also advocates for more Australian women writers on school curriculums.
In short: the Stella organisation has experienced significant success in a relatively short time.
Nevertheless, Stella co-CEO and creative director Jaclyn Booton does not agree with Overington's assessment of women writers' participation in the nation's literary life.
She's also not ready to down tools just yet.
"We don't stop the work because the work is successful … There are still voices and perspectives not being told," she says.
"There are still great works that don't get to that [publishing] stage because women can't make a living as a writer; because they have caregiving responsibilities; because they have community responsibilities. Those are important stories and we want to see more of them."
It does seem like more women are sharing their stories than ever before — and that their efforts are being acknowledged by the Stella Prize. In 2018, Alexis Wright became the first First Nations woman — and woman of colour — to win the prize.
There's also been a pronounced shift in the kinds of books nominated. While the early shortlists were dominated by fiction, the most recent have featured poetry, graphic novels and hybrid forms, including works that blend journalism with memoir.
This year's shortlist includes only two novels: one exploring the tension between motherhood and being an artist (Bad Art Mother by Edwina Preston) and the other a suspenseful debut about a 30-something woman teetering at the edge of a breakdown (Hydra by Adriane Howell).
The shortlist also features a journalistic work reflecting on the role of the media (Indelible City by Louisa Lim); a poetry collection about grief (The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt); a graphic memoir about living in a fat body (Big Beautiful Female Theory by Eloise Grills); and a profound personal history about Gundanji Country in the Northern Territory (We Come with This Place by Debra Dank).
This year is also the second in a row where the shortlisted works are all published by small and independent publishers.
Booton says these shifts are not deliberate on the part of either the organisation or the judges.
Instead, it reflects what has long been Stella's mission – to champion women's writing in all its forms.
"Even from the beginning, the idea of what was a typical 'Stella book' was up for debate," she says.
"The kinds of novels Stella has celebrated have always been pushing at the edges of things."
Booton says Stella does "things differently to other prizes".
"The aim of the prize was to tackle gender imbalance … And so there has always been a cultural change agenda in our work."
What makes a good Stella Prize judge?
It's the judges who decide how to interpret the Stella selection criteria, which have remained the same since the prize was established. These criteria are deceptively simple: The winner must be "excellent, original and engaging".
Booton says: "Who is in the room [the judges] is one of the things that affects [the shortlist]: What does original, excellent, engaging mean?
"Getting the right judging panel is a tricky and delicate process … I think of it like creating a really good dinner party table."
Stella judges – who volunteer their time — have so far included booksellers, published authors, academics, journalists, book critics and literary programmers.
This year's judging panel includes author Alice Pung as chair; Gomeroi writer and poet Alison Whittaker; writer, editor and academic Jeff Sparrow; and critics Astrid Edwards and Beejay Silcox.
"What you're looking for are people who are deeply invested in books and literature, who have professional expertise, who have a variety of views and experiences in that sector," says Booton.
The next qualifier, Booton says, is: "Do they bring enough different perspectives and ways of communicating that they will challenge each other and create a really rigorous dialogue?
"That process of really interrogating the assumptions and the kind of books that each of them might be choosing is the work."
Inside the room
When the Stella shortlist was announced in March, Pung, as chair of the panel, explained the judges' interpretation of the criteria:
"When considering how 'engaging' a work was, we searched for a sense of uncontrived emotional resonance, and the work's power to transcend its immediate appeal to become an enduring shifter of culture. We looked for 'originality' not only in content but in form, and 'excellence' at both a holistic and sentence-by-sentence level."
Talking to ABC Arts in the lead-up to the winner announcement on April 27, Pung said this year's Stella Prize judging panel was the most diverse she had ever been on.
"We had a poet who was Indigenous, we had two critics, we had an academic, we had a person on our panel who was a disability advocate," Pung says.
"I've been on panels where I'm the only person of colour and so you feel compromised. You're like, I have to represent every other person who otherwise will not get a fair go, [such as] writers of colour, writers of working-class backgrounds.
"When you have a diverse panel, you give your judges the freedom to judge on merit, rather than representation."
To assess the works based on the criteria of "excellent, original and engaging", the judges divided up the more than 200 books submitted; each was read by at least two of them, with books deemed "really excellent" read by most if not all of them.
For the longlist, the judges each selected their 12 favourites and pulled out the ones they had in common.
They leaned on each judge's knowledge — for example, deferring to the expertise of poet Alison Whittaker.
"We brought in our areas of expertise, and that's why the list has these different genres: It's not all novels, it's not half non-fiction and half this-or-that," says Pung.
She stresses that the judges did not come to the process of judging the 2023 prize wanting to make any particular statement.
"We just said, 'Let the best books rise to the surface.'"
The importance of small publishers
By Pung's reckoning, the best books this year just happened to be published by small presses.
"It appeared that they [smaller publishers] took the most risks; they published the books that were the most original and the most unusual that we'd read this year," she says.
"We're not like: 'We're gonna pick the underdog; we're just gonna boost them.' Because that's insulting.
"For myself as an author from a different ethnic background, I'd find it insulting if someone gave me a prize because they needed to represent diversity."
Booton says that the shortlisted books simply reflect the state of Australian publishing — including the adventurousness of small presses.
"Publishing is dynamic. The works that have been published, the kinds of stories and perspectives that are getting attention, are changing, and literary prizes come at the end of that chain and reflect it back."
In 2022, the prize expanded to include poetry for the first time.
"In opening up eligibility for the prize to poetry, we were recognising that women work in that space, and have been under-recognised for their contribution [to the poetry canon]," says Booton.
Fittingly, last year's prize was awarded to Evelyn Araluen, a descendant of the Bundjalung Nation, for her debut collection, Dropbear, which playfully deconstructs the Australian literary canon.
"It is now, I hope, becoming part of the canon for the future," says Booton.
"I am proud of the fact that one of the things Stella does is challenge the past and try to drive a different future, through the books.
"But we're only able to do that because the writers are doing it first. Writers are writing these books, publishers are publishing these books. And then Stella is saying these books deserve more attention."
