Carrie Tiffany wins inaugural Stella Prize for women writers

          

• by: MATTHEW WESTWOOD
• From: The Australian
• April 16, 2013              

   

 

Melbourne author Carrie Tiffany with her dog, Kip. Picture: Stuart McEvoy Source: The Australian

         

MELBOURNE author Carrie Tiffany has won the inaugural Stella Prize for women writers, saying she will share part of her $50,000 prize money with the five other shortlisted writers. 
        

Tiffany has won the award for Mateship With Birds, set in rural Victoria in the 1950s, about the courtship of a lonely farmer and his neighbour, an aged-care nurse.

The Stella - named for My Brilliant Career author Stella Miles Franklin - was established to raise the profile of women authors.
"I don't write particularly for women, I don't write for any particular reader in mind,'' Tiffany said.  "I write for myself, I think.''
But she welcomed the co-operative spirit of the Stella Prize, saying that women writers were supportive of each other.
She will share $10,000 of her prizemoney with Courtney Collins (The Burial), Michelle de Kretser (Questions of Travel), Lisa Jacobson (The Sunlit Zone), Cate Kennedy (Like a House on Fire) and Margo Lanagan (Sea Hearts).

  

Judging panel chairwoman Kerryn Goldsworthy said Tiffany had told an "original, tender, frank and funny version of the oldest story in the world: how a man and a woman get together."

Further report in the Sydney Morning Herald