Mykaela Saunders and Amy McQuire longlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize
UQP is delighted to announce that Mykaela Saunders and Amy McQuire have made the 2025 Stella Prize longlist for their respecitve works Always Will Be and Black Witness
Founded in 2012 the Stella Prize is a beloved and well-respected annual literary prize awarded to the most excellent, original and outstanding book written by an Australian woman or non-binary writer.
On Mykaela Saunders short story collection Always Will Be being longlisted the judges say:
Saunders has created a collection of stories that mirrors its characters; thrumming with life.
AboutAlways Will Be
In this stunningly inventive and thought-provoking collection, Mykaela Saunders poses the question: what might country, community and culture look like in the Tweed if Gooris reasserted their sovereignty?
About Mykaela Saunders
Dr Mykaela Saunders is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer, teacher and researcher, and the editor of This All Come Back Now, the Aurealis Award–winning, world-first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction (UQP, 2022). Always Will Be won the 2022 David Unaipon Award. Mykaela’s novel manuscript Last Rites of Spring was also shortlisted for the Unaipon Award in 2020, and received a Next Chapter Fellowship in 2021. Mykaela has won the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize, the National Indigenous Story Award, the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers Prize for creative non-fiction and the University of Sydney’s Sister Alison Bush Graduate Medal for Indigenous research. Of Dharug descent, Mykaela belongs to the Tweed Goori community through her Bundjalung and South Sea Islander family. Mykaela has worked in Aboriginal education since 2003, and at the tertiary level since 2012. They are currently an Indigenous postdoctoral fellow at Macquarie University, researching First Nations speculative fiction.
On Black Witness being longlisted the judges say:
McQuire's debut non-fiction is a must-read for all engaged citizens, especially journalists who want to represent the fullness of contemporary Australia.
AboutBlack Witness
A searing indictment of the media’s failures in reporting Indigenous affairs – and a powerful corrective that shows how Black journalism can pave the way for equality and justice.
About Amy McQuire
Amy McQuire is a Darumbal and South Sea Islander woman from Rockhampton, Central Queensland. She is a prolific Aboriginal affairs journalist, academic, writer and commentator who has been published in Guardian Australia, the National Indigenous Times, The Saturday Paper, BuzzFeed News Australia, New Matilda, Vogue Australia, Marie Claire, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others. She currently co-hosts Curtain The Podcast, which was named one of the top 25 true crime podcasts by New York’s Vulture magazine. In 2019 she won a Clarion Award and was nominated for a Walkley Award for her essay on the wrongful conviction of Aboriginal man Kevin Henry, and in 2023 she won Meanjin’s Hilary McPhee Award for brave essay writing for her piece on the disappearing of Aboriginal women. She is an Indigenous postdoctoral fellow at the Queensland University of Technology.
The 2025 Stella Shortlist will be announced on 8 April 2025 06:30 PM at The Wheeler Centre. You can get your tickets here.
Always Will Be
