In 2019 the Stella Prize shortlist once again proves that Australia's premier award for writing by women has a knack for spotlighting some of the country's most exciting and, often, under-the-radar writers.

The prize, worth $50,000, is awarded annually and is open to single works of nonfiction and fiction (including novellas) published by female-identifying Australian writers.

Since its inception in 2013, the prize has been awarded to a feminist take on the Eureka Stockade (2013's The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright), a dark work of speculative fiction in the spirit of The Handmaid's Tale (2015's The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood) and a historical novel that explores idealism and ambition against the backdrop of a 1930s artist commune (2014's The Strays by Emily Bitto), among others.

To help unpack this year's rattle bag of a shortlist, we've asked the ABC's book experts — Claire Nichols and Sarah L'Estrange from RN's The Book Show and Kate Evans from RN's The Bookshelf — to share their thoughts on the six shortlisted books.

Little Gods by Jenny Ackland (Allen & Unwin)

Little Gods is an evocative portrayal of childhood, set in the 1980s in Mallee country in north-western Victoria. ( ABC Arts: Michelle Pereira )

Little Gods is Ackland's second novel after 2015's The Secret Son. ( Supplied: Allen & Unwin )

Sorry, this audio has expired Stella prize shortlist: Jenny Ackland's Little Gods

Pay attention to birds in Australian fiction. They matter. But it's a particular bird that matters to 12-year-old Olive in Jenny Ackland's Little Gods, and her name is Grace. She's a glossy black crow, and she helps the girl deal with the mysterious adult world.

Olive lives in a regional Victorian town with her mum Audra and her dad, who she adores, although he is much less concrete than the women who surround her.

There are plenty of eccentric, even gothic, characters in this novel, including a collection of marvellous aunts, but it's firmly Olive's story. She's fierce and bold and flawed, with skinned knees and an awkwardly good memory:

"She had the sudden sharp glance of a child who takes in everything and annoys most adults she came into contact with. And she was fast."

Fast, too, to believe that she truly understands the secrets, half-truths and meaning behind old sadness and everyday tragedy. Her knowing and not knowing is what adds such a shudder of feeling to the story. KE

Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin (Brow Books)

Tumarkin's work is considered "narrative nonfiction" but she rejects the term. ( Supplied: Brow Books )

Sorry, this audio has expired Stella Prize shortlist: Maria Tumarkin's Axiomatic

It's hard to define this unique and unpredictable book by writer and cultural historian Maria Tumarkin. Put broadly, it's a piece of creative nonfiction: a series of essays linked by the theme of time, and the way that the past continues to influence the present.

But Tumarkin's approach to this format feels entirely fresh. She mixes factual reporting with personal reflection, philosophy and literary flourishes. As the Stella judges put it, "Axiomatic pushes the boundaries of nonfiction so far out that they will never recover".

In her first chapter, Time Heals All Wounds, Tumarkin introduces us to Frances, who is still coming to terms with her sister Katie's teenage suicide.

The essay gives us snippets of Frances's writing about her sister, and Katie's poetry and diary entries. From there, it progressively widens its view, introducing us to teachers from other schools affected by student deaths, reflecting on the changing policies schools have around acknowledging suicide, and sharing Tumarkin's fears about her own adult daughter. It's a gripping read.

Tumarkin, who was born in Ukraine, tackles big Australian issues in Axiomatic, including criminal injustice, drug addiction and migration. The book took seven years to write, and while the research is evident, so too is the deep connection Tumarkin forms with the people she interviews. CN

Pink Mountain on Locust Island by Jamie Marina Lau (Brow Books)

Lau counts writers Toni Morrison, Claudia Rankine and Han Kang as inspirations. ( ABC Arts: Michelle Pereira )

Lau is the youngest writer to be shortlisted for the Stella Prize. ( Supplied: Brow Books )

Sorry, this audio has expired Stella prize shortlist: Pink Mountain on Locust Island by Jamie Marina Lau

This experimental novel by 22-year-old Melbourne writer Jamie Marina Lau is about Monk, a 15-year-old girl living in an apartment in Chinatown with her father.

Lau writes "in all the apartments of this fat building the televisions don't turn off"; in Monk's household, the set seems to be perpetually tuned to wildlife documentary programs.

Monk and her father subsist on a diet of takeaway food but exchange little in the way of emotional sustenance.

While Monk's father shows her no attention, he does take a very keen interest in Santa Coy, an artist she befriends in an internet cafe. Santa Coy, in turn, spends more and more time at the apartment, drawing the father into his orbit to the exclusion of Monk.

Monk is surrounded by "phonies" but isn't aware when she is being used by others for nefarious reasons.

Most chapters are just one page long and episodic in fashion. It is a mash-up of Monk's observations about her world through a poetic noir lense.

Descriptions like "this is white tile boredom" and "my eyelids are fat babies" demonstrate the playfulness of Lau's writing, but the atmosphere of Monk's world is claustrophobic, gritty and disconnected. Oh, and there is a gun.

Lau was just 21 when this debut novel was published and it will introduce readers to a bold new voice in Australian literature. SL

The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie (Fourth Estate)

The Erratics won the Finch Memoir Prize in 2018. ( Supplied: Fourth Estate )

Sorry, this audio has expired Stella prize shortlist: The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie

Translator and academic Vicki Laveau-Harvie deploys words and language to devastating effect in this memoir of family dysfunction.

After her 94-year-old mother breaks her hip, Laveau-Harvie begrudgingly returns to Alberta, Canada from Australia to help her sister care for her parents — from whom she has been estranged for many years.

The Erratics transports the reader to the idyllic surrounds of her parent's property on the prairie, but, the author warns, "this is not a welcoming place". Her shorthand term for her mother is MMA: Mad as a Meat Axe.

Laveau-Harvie and her sister are pleased their mother is in rehab as it will give them a chance to help their father "recover from her regimen of starvation and brainwashing".

And yet, this is not a misery memoir; despite the difficult emotional terrain it covers, the humour is sharp and wry. It is an electrifying read by a confident and assured debut writer. SL

Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko (UQP)

The heroine of Too Much Lip whisks readers away to her fictional country hometown in Bundjalung country. ( ABC Arts: Michelle Pereira )

Lucashenko is a Bundjalung woman born in Brisbane. ( Supplied: University of Queensland Press )

Sorry, this audio has expired Stella Prize shortlist: Melissa Lucashenko's Too Much Lip

The opening pages of Too Much Lip see Kerry Salter roar back in to her home town in New South Wales's Bundjalung country on the back of a stolen motorbike. It's an unforgettable entrance for an unforgettable character: an opinionated and fearless Aboriginal woman torn between family loyalties and a desire to break away from the past.

Kerry has come home to farewell her dying pop and plans to stay in town for 48 hours, tops. But when she learns that an island sacred to the family is under threat from developers, she decides to stay and fight.

Lucashenko's writing style is sparse and direct, and the story rips along at great pace — much like that stolen Harley.

The characters — including the wonderfully named Pretty Mary and Black Superman — are flawed, realistic and loving. The prose is enriched by the regular use of Yugambeh language, as well as occasional moments of magic realism, like when Kerry stops by the side of the road for a quick chat with some crows.

While there are plenty of laughs, the novel also paints an unflinching portrait of life in an impoverished Aboriginal community.

It's an affecting study of the impact trauma and racism can have across the generations. A wonderful, funny and powerful read. CN

The Bridge by Enza Gandolfo (Scribe)

The collapse of the Westgate Bridge is still considered Australia's worst industrial accident. ( Supplied: Scribe Publishing )

Enza Gandolfo's novel begins in 1970, in a working-class community in Melbourne, where Antonello is a rigger on the half-built West Gate Bridge. By the end of the second chapter, the bridge has collapsed. Thirty-five men were killed that day.

This is the story of a terrible industrial accident that changed the landscape and memories of a city. It's a complex story of migrant communities and unions and blame, but it is also understood as a story of individual lives and families and relationships.

Sorry, this audio has expired Stella Prize shortlist: Enza Gandolfo's The Bridge

Antonello finished work that day a different man, and everything was different for his wife Paolini too, from the view out the window to the routes they would take through Melbourne for the rest of their lives.

There is a very real and powerfully emotional sense of lives being remapped in this story, not just for that day or that year, but for decades. And so another thread of the story happens 40 years later, with a young woman named Jo and her mother, Mandy.

This is a novel that could be didactic, but isn't. Instead, complex histories and emotions are made vivid through fiction. KE

The Stella Prize winner will be announced at a ceremony in Melbourne on Tuesday April 9.

For more coverage of The Stella Prize subscribe to The Book Show and The Bookshelf podcasts.