Edenglassie longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize

We're delighted to share the news that Melissa Lucashenko's latest novel Edenglassiehas been longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize.

In this brilliant epic, Melissa torches Queensland’s colonial myths, while reimagining an Australian future. For the full judges' report, read below or visit the Stella Prize website.

The shortlist will be announced on 4 April 2024.

Judges' report

These are characters who need to exist in the world. Lucashenko’s testament to them and their stories makes us all bear witness.

The omniscient narrator of Edenglassie takes the character – if not form – of the “Voice”, a unifying presence in the lives of its central blak protagonists. The “Voice” draws into being the spirituality that connects Country and its people across deep time and the braided temporal narratives of the novel.

In contemporary Brisbane, Lucaschenko’s Grannie Eddie, granddaughter and activist Winona, and DNA-tested newcomer, Dr Johnny, talk up to the ongoing injustices of cross-cultural relations; the complex dynamics of blak community; and the deep politics of Aboriginality. Meanwhile, in 1840s and 1850s Edenglassie (precedent to the independent colony of Brisbane), cultural giants like resistance warrior Dundalli, speak truth to state-sanctioned violence.

Edenglassie is Lucashenko’s seventh novel and clearest testament yet to her Goorie worldview. It is a storyline that centres blak perspectives and experiences in the fight for truth and identity justice, delivered with empathy and authentic characterisation.